Honestly I wasn't sure I was going to do this, as some of you know I initially did and then changed my mind but then zXAmeliaXz u/5887836/ mentioned it to me and the idea was born anew. So many thanks zXAmeliaXz! I ended up replaying the game and I couldn't resist coming back to Sarah/Ariadne's story. I'm trying to bring in some of the greater mythros of the Vampire Masquerade world and have used the White Wolf wiki for research. Apologies well in advance for any errors and inaccuracies, both intentional and unintentional.
As always please read and review!
Once upon a time a man, Caine, murdered his brother in a jealous rage because sometimes locking your brother in the closet and breaking his favourite toys just isn't enough vengeance. The man was then cast out of paradise for his sins and marked for all eternity as being neither man nor demon but a dark combination of both. Out in the deserts he met the first woman, Lilith, who let him partake of her blood, magic, knowledge and love. He was then visited by four angels, each offering him a chance to repent but he turned them away because the dark side's always more fun. With each angel he turned away another aspect of his curse was added- a weakness to the flames, a vulnerability to the fire in the sky, the eternal hunger for the blood and finally, damnation from the light. After this the Disciplines, gifts of Lilith, became Caine's strengths and he left Lilith because her curse was loneliness and every good story needs heartache, right?
Eventually, after much wandering, Cain found himself in the First City amongst men and in awe of his powers the king surrendered his throne to Caine. That king soon became Caine's first Childe- Enoch- and the city was named after him, the City of Enoch, very original. One wonders why it wasn't called that when Enoch was king but anyway, don't let logic get in the way of a good story. Next Irad was turned because Enoch was lonely, then Zillah because Caine was horny. Zillah refused Caine until a Crone helped him use the gift of blood bond to bind Zillah to him, of course she also blood bonded Caine to herself. Eventually the blood bond faded and Caine staked her but she might reappear because no one really knows who or what she was to begin with but she was magic and magic explains everything anyway.
So, Enoch, Irad, and Zillah were the Second Generation of Kindred who embraced the Third Generation until Caine realised that numerous bloodthirsty vampires might be a problem and declared there be no more. This was fine until the deluge came and many of the vampires were wiped out save some antediluvians. With no Kine to feed on they survived by drinking each other's vitae. They sought out Caine after the flood but he rejected them so they killed Enoch, Irad, and Zillah in their anger or possibly for power, if they diablerised them, that is drank of their blood, they absorbed their power.
Caine found out about the death of his children and went after the antediluvians finding them in the Second City (yes that's the name they stuck with for that city). In this city he found them creating the Fourth Generation and he cursed them with what would come to be known as clan weaknesses. The city was eventually destroyed and the clan leaders, the Third Generation antediluvians faded into legend. What followed was Jyhad, the eternal struggle between the antediluvians and the elders of the Fourth Generation, their former closest and oldest children known as Methuselahs. As personal as the struggle is however the battle is much wider pulling in pawns unwitting, unwilling and unknowing- those of the Camarilla who deny the very existence of Caine, antediluvians and Jyhad; the Sabbat who think themselves wise to the game and the would be army of Caine; the Anarchs who claim to be indifferent and apart from it all and, of course, little old me.
Jyhad isn't just a game between Methuselahs and antediluvians but between antedilvuians and Caine as well. The antedilvuains are the hated and beloved founders of the thirteen clans who betrayed their sires earning Caine's eternal wrath and were in turn betrayed by their own offspring. Now they play a dangerous game of treachery and survival and the game only grows as new alliances and rivalries join the board. Once, when Gehenna was on everyone's lips as Thin-Bloods and mysterious sarcophaguses joined the game, the Methuselahs made their move in the form of ur-Shulgi, the burned child. The antedilvuains answered with Malkav making their move in the form of me, myselves and us.
My name is Sarah Grey, once I was a human turning mad, then I became Ariadne, daughter of three, turned against the righteous Camarilla laws by Malkavian and Toreador alike to rise in the Malkavian clan. A Toreador, Alex, meant to make me Kindred but a Malkavian, Xander, did instead. Xander then had a Malkavian, Moon Boy, framed for the deed and slaughtered by the Camarilla to whom's whose mercy I was abandoned. A lost princess taken in by a golden haired prince it sounds sweet but this is no fairytale, this is a horror story. The prince made a slave of the mad daughter and sent her on missions he meant to see her swiftly destroyed but the princess found salvation with the greatest pretenders of all- the Toreadors. In the land of make belief, tinsel and despair she found sanctuary with the poets and artists and love with the Baron of the land, Isaac. There Ariadne also reunited with Alex only to find him one half of Xander, Alexander, the Malkavian who thought himself a Toreador.
A long story followed because when the elders make a move in Jyhad it has to be grand, impressive like fireworks but long like a school lesson. In the end Malkav made Ariadne into Sarah Grey once more as a solution to his desire to destroy her and all things Malkavian. Happy ever, right? Wrong.
See Sarah Grey, that's me now and then, was mad to begin with and being Malkavian helped that, it controlled it but without the clan's web to help restrain the voices Sarah went madder than Ariadne could. Worse, Sarah was Kine now and she knew things, things that ought only be known to Kindred, she was a living, breathing violation of the Camarilla laws. Also, she, I (it's hard to tell sometimes) had been seen defeating a Methuselah and she had been touched by Malkav. Too many hands in too many pots Sarah had. Couldn't really believe the monsters of the night would just leave us alone.
Well they didn't. Daddy got tired of my madness and had me sent away to the mad house in the hills, out of sight, out of mind. Could scream all I wanted there, got mind numbing injections for my troubles, body numb, limp, fluffy and heavy, ripe for violation by the staff. Nothing ever truly silenced him though. See when Malkav cast out the immortality and the death he forgot to cast out himself too and free Sarah from the web. Now Sarah wanders the maze of madness Ariadne did but she cannot navigate it the way Ariadne could. I gave up in the mad house, sweaty hands got too familiar on the flesh and I could not protest. Ariadne would have chopped off those hands. Ariadne would have ripped out their throats too and dined on their blood. My teeth weren't strong enough and when I tried to use them they only got broke.
I thought this would be the worst of it and I prepared to submit to the madness but on the eve of my would be self lobotomy, with a pocket knife stolen from James' pants when they were down and he was otherwise occupied, they came. The bogeymen to the monsters, the self-made demons of the darkness, I had once called them Sabbat. They massacred staff and patients alike, burned the asylum to the ground and spared only one- Sarah Grey. At her lips the poisonous blood was pressed and down her throat it was forced again and again until Sarah Grey was forgotten again.
I don't know who I am now rotting in chains in a room I cannot make out for the shadows. I know only delirium, a twisted love for a monster who calls himself Valyrion, a Tzimisce. I had known the cruel crafters hands treating my flesh like clay before, or rather Ariadne had, and I thought I knew the worst of them but that was wrong. There was worse than fearing and hating them, there was loving them. Loving the beast as he made me urinate in terror, loving him as he twisted my insides purely for his pleasure, begging him for more even as I cried and wanted to plead for him to stop, and loving him as he thought up new creative ways to terrorise me all in a futile act to bring some forgotten truth of ancients and their secrets out of me. No, nothing is worse than being forced to love the one who tortures you.