In the Beginning

Byron was born as Feodha Corca the Lion, one of the great 'Lions of War' and appears now as he did in his human form as Feodah; However it was not always so. To become an immortal, Feodha struck a deal with Lucifer on his death, whereby his soul was cast into the abyss to be remade as a first born Astraeus vampire. Byron lived his first 500 years with all the appearanced of a Hideous monster, half Lion and half man, the price paid for his immortality. Byron's enemy Ewyn was certain Feodah could be nothing if not evil and do nothing if not unspeakable acts of cruelty, devilry and tyranny. But the life he had lived as a monstrous human did not end with Feodah's death. It began with his rebirth. Feodah made his pact with the devil and was transformed into that creature that was both man and beast. In this pact;, Feodah stood as a man but his face was as a lion's in many ways, his hair a lion's mane, his teeth as a lion's. His flesh was partly furred, his hands like paws with thick, clawed fingers, and his eyes amber as a lion's. Though he stood upright his thighs were turned out as a lion giving him a powerful gate. He even had a Lion's tail. The devil forced Feodah not only to assume this humbling but monstrous form, which he had to hide from the eyes of all men, because on his world of humans he was a freak and a monster, Feodah was also obligated to pay for every sin with his flesh, his pride, his soul, and his cold, cold heart. Feodah was transformed...but in time, he proved himself a worthy servant to the Morning Star, God of Acheron, and moreover, his heart was transformed. He saw the evils he had perpetrated without excuse, without vindication or justifications which could remove him from guilt and remorse. His heart and mind was shredded by the atrocities he had elected, ELECTED to perpetrate. Oh, how he loathed himself. He barely survived the trial of his own evils. He dwelled in his homeland as a recluse, in the castle he had been born in, trapped in that monstrous body. He shrouded himself in robes and a huge cloak of red, black and gold tartan. Men who had followed him as Feodah followed him still as the Astraeus vampire the devil recreated him as. He lengthened the lives of his knights by making them his thralls. He dared not make anyone in his own image. As a vampire, he became Feodah's son, Byron Decasey.

In the beginning Byron was irascible with his self-loathing. His killing days were not done yet, would never truly be done, for he was the greatest swordsman on earth. No one every proved different. But, he no longer thirsted for blood, else it was to sustain himself as a vampire and then he only took lives to defend his lands and people. What finally began to lift him out of that horrible fog of his past evils, guilt and remorse, was the love of a kind young woman with auburn hair, and deep blue eyes. He fell in love with her...with the first human he permitted to see him as he had become. At first she was terrified...She fled screaming at the sight of him, but the next day she returned to the garden where they met, and where he always waited for her...for his beloved Anna. He confessed everything to her, and she begged him to forgive himself..."You are not that monster anymore," she told him. She resumed her friendship with him as though nothing had ever happened. She professed her love to him and he was reluctant. He feared himself...that he would hurt her. But he could not deny what he felt for her...Theirs was a love that was true and honest. He finally got up the nerve to ask her to be his wife, and she consented. They were married a month after she accepted his marriage proposal. They were happy...so happy, but it was a paradise that would not last. Byron still had Feodah's sins to pay for and he was to pay with the ones he loved. His allies, the Mac'Ewens had dispatched messengers to bring Feodah some news of an Albion division moving on his territory. They found him bathing to envision him as the monster he truly was...the devil they could only see him as unveiled. They hid this from him.

His allies, his friends, they hid their fear and hate from him, and called him to battle to fight the invading Albion army, and while he fought in the Mac'Ewen's ranks with glorious skill, and with strategies that won the war for them, ten slayers where dispatched to his home to kill his wife. His beloved bride, who was as sweet as clover honey, as gentle as milkweed down, as golden as the sun, who carried in her womb a child eight months conceived, was brutally raped and butchered.

Byron broke from battle...He felt her fear and her pain...and he drove his horse to the ground riding home, leaving the battle on the borderlands between Caldonia and Albion behind him. His castle was only a few leagues away, those borderlands, his lands. He found his castle, crops, orchards and vineyards burned, and his wife dead. He had not arrived in time to save her...Someone had cut open her body and removed his son...He assumed that it was his enemy. Byron wasted no time. Driven by his rage and grief; he took his wrath and armies on the land, and slew first the Clan Mac'Ewen down to the last man, woman and child, but his fury did not stop with them, no. He became known as the Red Death of Caldonia, a plague that bathed in the blood of thousands of Caldonians and Albions on the battlefield. He was hunted day and night, his knights and soldiers growing fearful, some turning assassin to attempt to slay their good Lord gone mad. When a day came that Byron could trust no one, not even his own knights, he went abroad of Caldonia. It was on that fated day that he won his first war overseas in Gaul, to sack and usurp a castle and kingdom there, that he proved his strength, honor, and skill to Lucifer, who granted Byron his first trial in Hell. His prize? His guise as he was when he was human, and to become an apprentice under Lucifer himself. Lucifer took this vampire under wing and taught him the ways of his paths and those more recluse abilities locked within Byron, and sent him upon many quests to sharpen his skills as a vampire and magus. A natural fighter, and legendary swordsman, one who had an innate ability to learn magic, Byron rose in Hell's ranks to Prince of Vampires, and was given a city of his own to rule in hell; Arcador, the City of Vampires. Over the years Byron became known as the noblest of Vampires, for he sired none who were not willing, who had not the nature to be a vampire, and he slew only those innocents who failed to heed his warnings. His enemies and fools alike alone did he save the savage and masterful skill of his sword's wrath, and vampiric charms for.

A time came when he learned that it had not been his enemies who had taken his son. Lucifer had, to place him on the doorstep of a monastery in Gaul. Gaul had long become France before Lucifer reunited Byron with his son Armand. To this day very few remember or know him as the infamous Feodah Corca, The Lion of Scotland. Through all the years he lived alone, only one other woman could tame his heart and bring light to his soul again, his beloved Lena. He thanks the fates everyday for delivering her to him.

As of 2010 ET he had been married to his wife Lena for 850 years.

 

Enemies from the Past

Ewyn Glennamain

Ewyn Glennamain and his warriors protected their lands and people fiercely. Despite their honor, determination, strength and courage, and all the ordeals they had to overcome together; Defeat found them on the battlefield as Feoda Corca conquered his armies and people. It was with Ewyn's terrible death that he discovered vengeance was his. A vengeance he took against Feoda Corca, the Scourge of Scotland, who had come to Eire to claim as much soil as his armies could take. In life Feoda defeated Ewyn's army by the sword, and executed his worthy opponent by the rising of the tide. As the living dead; Ewyn conquered the wretched king Feoda, his rage, his wits and his bitterness the weapons he used against him. As an immortal; Ewyn discovered that the forces of good and evil maintained a delicate balance, and swore himself to conquer evil wherever it lurked.

 

The Past marches into the Future

The evolution of a vampire

As the living dead, Feoda Corca became something Ewyn would never have imagined in his wildest dreams, a noble vampire and clan leader who came to be known as Byron Decasey. All his life Ewyn has searched for Feoda, his resolve pit against avenging all the people Byron once slew, oppressed and tormented as Feoda. Not until he came to Morashtar, many thousands of years after his rebirth, had Ewyn so much as glimpsed Feoda Corca, but in a tavern in Hawker's Forte, a little over one hundred years after relocating to Morashtar, he caught his first glimpse of the immortal born in Scotland, and reborn in Hell. Determined to end Byron's life, Ewyn began his quest to rid the world of a vampire he believes is the embodiment of evil. What was the saying? All good things must come to an end?

 

A great deal happened to Byron over a two and half year period which would prove challenging and emotional for him and everyone who loved him. All his woes and the ordeals ahead product of a demonic possession by a Beqidum arch-devil named Mog.

Mog was pure evil, and enjoyed possessing people just to corrupt them and then abandons their coils to observe the results from the body of another person, cat, dog, or bird. He was a time weaver, enchanter, and sorcerer, a Demigod of corruption.

Mog's purpose in life was to ruin those he possessed, drive them insane, to suicide, make them outcasts, or get them killed indirectly. Mog could not be detected, sensed or seen by any means but one. Mog possessed Byron out of mere chance because Byron killed an enemy the demon inhabited, at what time Mog leapt into Byron even as Byron ran his sword through the heart of the Setis Chieftain he was killing. Mog's favorite men to ruin were those who were rich, good looking and powerful which fit Byron's MO perfectly.

 

First off, Mog played Byron very well. He let his personality surface even when he was controlling him and then let Byron be very much himself when he was not controlling him. Two factors played into explaining changes in Byron's behavior; One; it is well known that Byron loves scotch and anyone who knows him well is aware of what a lousy drunk he is. Mog gradually turned Byron into an alcoholic. Two; Mog used the excuse of Shaithis not being Byron's son and the vampire's paranoia over the possibility of Valaeros awakening in him to drive a rift between Byron and Lena. As time progressed, Byron became more and more difficult to live with. Byron was abusive to Shaithis when he was drunk. He was abusive to the servants, to Michael (if you remember has been with Byron forever, even before he met Lena) beat Tiber all the time for having raped Shaithis and for just being Tiber, and worst of all, he began breaking his own laws.

 

Nic, Byron's personal guard, reported to Lena that Byron had forcibly sired three people (only one who has surfaced named Terra, the daughter of his own ranger Denveth), and was engaging in blood hunts of random civilians. Byron had outlawed blood hunts on innocents in his country. His Kingdom in An Morendor was called Seumir. Nic would not tell Lena who Byron sired, because he was sworn to keep his confidence and had betrayed him enough by telling her that he had sired anyone at all; he just wanted Lena to know that her husband was breaking his own clan laws, and force siring was one he forbid on the penalty of death. He feared for Byron and swore to her that he would cover up what he had done. Tiber and Rhia finally left after a little over two years of suffering Byron's downward spiral. They returned to earth with Rob and the gang where they stayed between the Club Elysium they had opened in London, the Elysium in New Orleans, with plans to build two more in Spain and Paris.

 

Now where Lena tended to be able to influence Byron to stop or curtail his drinking at a certain point, Byron became less and less susceptible to her influence. At this point Byron had been physically abusive to everyone BUT Lena. He had neither physically abused her nor fooled around on her that she was AWARE of, but he had been emotionally abusive at times, accusing her of desiring her own son Shaithis on some level, because she had felt some kind of twisted love for Valaeros. He became violently possessive and protective of her, beating anyone who so much as looked at her wrong, including Shaithis, above all Shaithis perhaps. He tried to keep Lena home at all times, physically stopping her from going anywhere without him.

 

No one knew he was possessed but Shaithis decided he was. The possibility had not even occurred to anyone until Shaithis said to Lena one night that Byron was not behaving at all like himself, not because he had become a drunk, or because he was in pain, but because he was certain he was possessed. Shaithis just got it in his head that some spirit, demon, or devil HAD to have possessed his father and refused to believe anything else. He refused to believe Byron was even capable of being so cruel to his own wife, children or even his servants. Lena did not see it because she remembered a darker Byron who was capable of many things his children had never seen in him. She also remembered all the stories Byron had told her of his past, of how wicked he used to be. But now that Shaithis mentioned it, it made her think. Shaithis swore Byron was incapable of the things he was doing unless he was being controlled by something...something very clever which had them all fooled. With no proof to back him, he went to Valis with his claims. All of them, Lena and even Tiber included, tried to prove Shaithis right but failed to do so. Tiber decided Byron was not possessed, that he had just reverted to the asshole he used to be. If Valis and his knights could not even uncover another entity in Byron then it did not exist, he decided. He told Shaithis it was wishful thinking on his part and to deal with the facts. Byron was a total dick. Good old Tiber. Valis remained open to all possibilities. The things Byron was doing were very out of character for him, but then...he had become reliant on booze and was almost always drunk, and the Valaeros thing had really messed with him...and the things Shaithis had dug up in himself over four-hundred years after his birth, Byron discovering after all this time that Shaithis was not even really his son, had reopened those old wounds. Byron had begun acting somewhat irrationally even before he was possessed. His temper was hotter and he often sought battle to vent his frustrations on.

 

One month after Rhia and Tiber left, Lena went off to earth as well, to find a way to help Byron through Demon connections she had. Whatever Lena said to him when she left, Mog made Byron believe she had told him that she never wanted to see him again, made him believe that she had left him forever...had hated what he had become. Mog compelled Byron thereafter to disown Shaithis, Tiber and Rhia, all of them for abandoning him, and Shaithis because he was not his son. On earth, Lena's connections, either accidentally or intentionally, led Lena to be captured by a VERY powerful demon named Mekkor, who like Valaeros, used her for pleasure, only Mekkor was much worse than Valaeros ever was. Mekkor took her to his countryside manor in England. Mekkor was far more perverse that Valaeros, restrained nothing of his will. He embodied corruption. There was no vile act he feared. Mekkor shared Lena with an Avari vampire who had split identities named Manon, and it was his evil half Mecca he shared Lena with while his better half Manon was held prisoner. Manon, in an effort to purge evil from himself, had separated himself from Mecca recently. While Mecca came and went as he desired, Manon could meander around Mekkor's manor but he could not leave it because of the wards. Lena was also bled to keep her weak, her Astraeus blood preserved for use as a weapon (being that Astraues blood either paralizes or turns anyone it infects into stone, unless they are clan).

 

Mekkor then arranged to release evidence that Lena had been captured and murdered, a death that he made very convincing. He made it look like slayers had captured her and taken snuff photos of her cruel murder. He made sure this evidence got to Tiber and Rhia, but in a subtle way that was beyond suspicion. News and proof of her death would soon reach Byron.

Manon in the time being had figured out a way he might escape and was plotting to rejoin with his Mecca personality, and help Lena to escape with him from Mekkor's Keep when a good time presented itself.

 

Now meanwhile, months before Byron was made aware of Lena's falsified death, Mog had taken Byron to the desert of fire, with the aim of visiting the city of Inaaksu to form an allience with King Saeed, which Mog intended to find a way to endanger Byron by, but on his way there, he met up with King Saeed's children Saffiel and Valkar, who were fleeing Inaaksu for fear of their father the King who had done horrible, even unspeakable things to them both in the recent past. Intercepting them, Mog had Byron do as Byron would have done, he helped them out, but unlike Byron he offered them his protection if Saffiel agreed to marry him, and she did, whereof he sent them to Chateau Rouge DeLune. He went back to the Inn hours later and not a week later Mog had him sire them both (it was their choice), then not a week after that, he took Saffiel as his wife. Mog was sure this would be the blow that would undo Byron if nothing else he had done could. Mog had sabotaged Byron in many ways, done things which would still be catching up to Byron months and years after he vacated Byron's meat suit.

 

Only days after Byron had married Saffiel, King Saeed came to see the Prince of Vampires and King of Seumir, and with him he had a way of seeing Beqidum (an item which Maelmorda provided him) which thus gave him the power to take action against the formless ones. Mog fled Byron's body because he could be attacked, and jumping from one body to another, he made his escape before anyone could stop him, but Byron was now free of Mog...Free of his spirit but hardly of his influences.

 

Byron still felt as Mog had made him feel, he remembered what Mog had wanted him to remember, and would in time remember it all because Mog wanted him to suffer everything he had ever done, though some things he would not remember until Mog released those memories to him. Mog was a god among his kind. Byron had in essence been possessed by the demigod of corruption...So here Byron and Lena were, both victims of beings which embodied corruption.

 

Byron began to feel all the loss and terrible things he had done, and while he was reminded that it was not him, but Mog who had caused so much havoc in his life, he still felt it all in himself. His new wife Saffiel was the one good thing which had come of it all...she lifted his spirit when he wanted to sink into despair. She loved him and he felt the love for her which Mog had planted in his heart. It had taken root and flourished ever after Mog was gone. Byron had come to love Saffiel. It was not the same kind of love he felt for Lena, but it was love all the same. Saffiel was very different from Lena, how could he love them the same?

 

It was all part of Mog's plan to ruin him. Mekkor was working with Mog. He would allow Lena to escape when the time was right, but only after Byron believed Lena was dead. Manon and Lena would not escape because they could, but because Mekkor would let them. Mog wanted Lena to return to Byron and find him not only with just a wife, but a son which happened to be Mog's, for as Lena had bore him a son out of one enemy, Saffiel had birthed him a son of another enemy. Mog loved irony. Byron discovered very soon in fact that the baby Saffiel carried was Mog's, but he and Saffiel came to love the son they named Victor regardless of who his father was. Byron could sense nothing but goodness in Victor. Byron planned to have a child with Saffiel that was his own however...Rhia and Tiber had abandoned him, Shaithis...well Shaithis still believed in him but he was not really his son, was he? Much as he did love him. Byron felt abandoned by his entire clan, Lena included, but in his heart he could not give up on Lena.

 

Shaithis meanwhile had made a deal with Saeed, had promised to offer him anything in his power if he could help rid Byron of the demon possessing him. Saeed had intended to that regardless, but after Mog had vacated the Prince of Vampires, he traded on the offer Shaithis had made and marked him as his own, then took Shaithis with him to Inaaksu. It was his way of punishing Byron for taking his son and daughter from him.

 

Byron went on a search for Lena, unknown to Saffiel and in doing so received news and proof from earth that she was dead. One thing led to another and soon Byron found himself on a dangerous quest in search of a valuable item. A part of him was seeking an end to himself, but it was an end that would not come, because he defeated every enemy and danger he met along the way. He returned home once a week in the two months he strayed. Byron was very proficient at bottling up his emotions, no matter how they ate at him from the inside, and kept all his grief and pain to himself, even when he told Saffiel the news of his second wife's death, second as in, Lena was his second wife, and Saffiel his third. Byron had only been married three times in his absurdly long life. Believing that Lena had left him, and that she was now deceased, did not make anything any easier on Byron. The burden of grief and heartache he carried in himself was immense, but Byron was a survivor, so he went on as best he could, hiding all which he felt, while allowing Saffiel to sooth a small amount of that agony.

 

So life went on...and he ached inside, burned with Lena's loss, felt as if his soul would capsize and sink into the chasms of the abyss itself, but for Saffiel...She kept him afloat, kept him from relenting to the darkness which tempted his retreat into that empty place where his heart could grow cold and his heart held no sway.