Paolo Costa's page

Simon Dykstra’s parents, both teachers, impressed on him the importance of education from an early age. School was the most important part of the day. He must always take it seriously. He would go to college. He would go to graduate school. They expected a PhD, albeit not an education one. They had high hopes he would become a scientist, possibly working for the government, because that would be a much better paying job. As long as he kept his grades up, they placed few other demands on him.

As a result, Simon learned to thrive under pressure and how to kick back and let loose. His frustrations with parental expectations transferred easily into rage against the many injustices of America in the 1990s. He settled naturally into the Goth subculture. The music didn’t do much for him, but he enjoyed the aesthetics. By the time he was fourteen he went to school with a face painted white, purple lipstick, and dyed black hair. He wore a dog collar and had piercings.

And Simon rarely missed a protest. The cause always mattered, but he would protest as much in solidarity with others as for issues dearest to his own heart. He nurtured dreams of becoming an activist or living on a radical commune. He rejected science as a tool of the white supremacist capitalist world order and embraced paganism, happily declaring himself a witch. He and his small coven cobbled together a religion equal parts drugs, sex, and what they could find in the New Age section of the bookstore. When the other kids started calling the group gay, -Simon was, some of the others were not- he took the heat by burning through three printer cartridges to stick a coming out letter in every locker in the school. If anyone wanted to prove it, they just had to come and ask for a kiss; guys only.

Simon got zero kisses and many beatings out of that. His parents pleaded with him to take self-defense classes. He suggested joining wrestling instead because that was where all the totally straight guys were; he knew because half of them had punched him at least once. They were not amused, which made him actually consider it. A goth wrestler would mess with a lot of heads...and some of those guys were kind of cute, in a braindead way.

The wrestling coach took one look at Simon and told him off. He put on his reasonable adult face when Simon didn’t immediately leave and told him that even if he was serious, the other boys would murder him. He would not get out of the locker room with all his pieces. Simon laughed. The coach slammed him against the wall and made it clear that he was serious. That only made Simon insist and start threatening to call the ACLU. The longer the conversation went on the more committed Simon became to what had started as a pure joke.

The coach made Simon watch a solid week of practices in all their mind-numbing glory. It looked dull and hard, but not impossible. He could see ways that the wrestlers could hurt him, but Simon already got enough pain from those guys that he wasn’t afraid of it and he still didn’t believe they would literally kill him. He was mostly right; it took a week before an “accident” broke his nose, the two bones of his lower arm just above the wrist, and laid his left hand back on top of the broken arm bones.

That put an end to Simon’s season. He burned with rage for months, but he grimly attended every practice anyway. He sat and watched. Sometimes Coach had him haul equipment or keep records. He glared hatred at the wrestlers, especially the one who broke his bones, and they teased him. He went to their meets, dressed in team colors and sitting on the bench like one of the guys. They always left plenty of space open around him. When “his” team competed, Simon shouted encouragement like the rest but with considerably more aggression. He took care to keep within the bounds of good sportsmanship and say things that mostly sounded like they were directed toward his teammates. The only thing Simon’s friends and the wrestlers agreed on was how nuts he had to be to keep up with this.

Simon’s cast outlasted the season. Until then, no one laid a hand on him. Soon afterwards, the wrestlers descended on him again. They were careful not to break any more bones, but Simon went home with a solid bruising. After that they largely left him alone, sure that Simon would never have anything to do with them again.

The plan had been to do just that. Simon had proved his point and the wrestlers seemed to have let up. He could beat him up if they wanted to, but Simon didn’t take it and crawl away. But the hole in Simon’s schedule never quite seemed to fill up like it should have. More time for his friends was very welcome, and they spent a lot of time making fun of the wrestlers, but Simon did the math and realized that wrestling ate up four or five hours six days of most weeks. What had he done with all that beforehand?

In the Spring, Simon went out for track. He decided to specialize in long distance running on the theory that it would eat up more of his empty time. Though only a middling runner, he honestly enjoyed it. The other boys kept their distance, and Simon was required to change separately from them, but he settled into a reasonably comfortable situation. His burning determination won grudging respect and a few tentative friendships.

Junior year came around. His parents and friends tried to talk him out of it, but Simon went right back to wrestling. He worked hard, building on a training regime he picked up from books and practiced over the summer. When he showed up for his first practice, he brought a pin with him and dropped it as soon as he had everyone’s attention. It turned out you couldn’t hear a pin drop on a wrestling mat.

This time around, Simon was aggressive. He worked hard from the start, visibly pushing himself. The wrestlers insulted him and were frequently much rougher than justified, but Simon rolled with it. He’d spent a lot of time thinking about how his bones got broken in the last year and knew better how to avoid it now. He survived up through the first meet. The day before it, he challenged the boy slated to wrestle their weight class. The rules said that if you could beat the scheduled wrestler in two falls of three, Coach had to give you a chance at competition. Simon did.

Stony silence greeted him again. His opponent, Rory, tried to be a good sport about it and shrug things off. Simon proved his point. He could do this. Maybe he didn’t deserve everything they dealt out. We even?

No, they were not even. If he wanted his spot back, he needed to win a wrestle-off. Then Simon started parroting back all the things they had told him the year before: You work hard. You earn everything in here. Or is that all a bunch of crap? Rory appealed to Coach and Coach pulled Simon aside. Was he actually serious about this? Did he realize that Rory was going to be on his tail for the rest of the season if he insisted? Yes to both.

Simon narrowly lost his first proper match, which prompted much teasing. Rory challenged him the day after and lost. Then he did again the next week and won. Simon challenged him right back. They spent the season locked in a bitter rivalry. Rory wrestled at the next meet, but then Simon was back on top and remained there. He finished his season with one more competition win than losses.

Slowly, it made a difference. The guys still wrestled harder against him than anyone, but the teasing dwindled to nothing. The same sort of grudging respect as Simon got on track wrestled again. When Rory lost the last wrestle-off, he even laughed about it. At the end of the season, they even invited Simon to the unofficial team party. He showed up and announced his resignation to the stunned squad. A few even asked if he meant it. Simon told them that he did what he came to do and now he was done. For his senior year he did swimming instead, even talking Jacob, one of his goth friends, into coming along by noting the required uniform and a particular swimmer who was also in the Jacob’s math class.

Simon went off to the university of his choice, Stanford, to study computer programming. He had an intuitive connection with machines going back to childhood and had a computer at home from the time he was ten. By the time he left the wrestling team, he had graduated from coding simple programs to poking around undetected on the school district’s network. Simon never changed anything, but computers held an enduring fascination with him and in an era of dot com startups it seemed like an ideal career path. He could do what he loved and do some socially conscious software intrusion on the side. Maybe a little cash from an oil company ended up in a bank account he controlled, with no one the wiser.

Sailing through his undergrad courses, in equal parts thanks to a good head start and the determination that rose inside him whenever he hit a big electronic wall telling him “no,” Simon began his doctoral program at a sprint. He had the idea that he might finish in record time, which would be sure to get him noticed by headhunters.

Things Fall Apart
Then things started to go wrong. Simon’s mother, out of nowhere, developed a monster drug habit. Overnight she was on everything. His father found out and Simon flew home in a rush. While he was on the plane she slipped out of the house and overdosed in her classroom. Simon spent a year at home, helping his father cope. They both hit the bottle a little, but kept a close watch on each other and got through it. By the spring, things seemed manageable and Simon returned to his research. The day he left, his father painted the downstairs bathroom with the insides of his skull.

Simon coped by throwing himself into his research and adopting an exercise regime again to burn through the almost uncontrollable emotions. Neither helped much. Finally he decided he needed time away from everything familiar. He signed on as a deckhand on a crab fishing boat and spent a miserable winter almost getting killed on the Bering Sea.

The only thing that made it at all bearable was the ocean. Simon had never been on a boat for any length of time. The steady roll of the deck and the sound of the waves did far more for his mental health than being screamed at by men auditioning for the role of lung cancer patient. He never stopped hating them and didn’t feel like he had anything to prove anymore. He finished the season sore from head to toe, exhausted, and confident he was never doing anything that stupid again. He wasn’t even paid well.

Still, it helped. With more distance, going back to his research was at last tolerable. When it wasn’t, Simon put on a CD of ocean sounds and buckled down. He made steady progress and was just about ready to run his prototypes by his committee when disaster struck again. A friend and fellow PhD student, Markus, accidentally destroyed the main drive Simon was using to keep his files. He had backups, but lost a few days work and had to delay his presentation.

Just as Simon was ready to go again, the FBI arrived at his apartment with a warrant and confiscated all his computers. He was careful and knew they were safe, but it brought his research to a standstill. More than anything, he wanted to hack into the FBI and see what they thought they had on him, but Simon knew that was insane. They would be watching for that. Whenever he used a computer in public, a youngish guy with a conservative haircut always appeared in short order. He knew they had his apartment watched and couldn’t imagine they neglected to watch his internet traffic.

Simon got angry all over again as this wore on for months. He missed three deadlines from a combination of confiscated hardware and the endless stretch. He finally demanded to know when he would get his equipment back and what they were investigating him for. No one would tell him, so Simon hired a lawyer who sucked up money and never got anywhere. His committee turned from understanding to impatient. A student two years behind, Janet, was working on a similar project and making remarkable progress. Markus, still feeling guilty over the accident, slipped a segment of her code to Simon. It matched his line for line.

The smart thing to do would have been to go straight to his advisors. Simon looked up where Janet lived and went to her. She reported him to the FBI so she could steal his work and Simon had had enough. He drove over to her building in a rage, heedless of the FBI tail that must be following him, and pounded on the door under a moonless night sky. No one answered. He tried the door and found it unlocked. Janet’s apartment was empty, but a handwritten note asked Simon to meet her. It listed a warehouse in an isolated industrial park. Simon went and the FBI surveillance van quietly followed behind.

Simon hadn’t completely lost his mind. He circled the warehouse looking for signs of danger, then snuck up and tried to peek inside. All the windows were too high or blocked. Only one door was open. He readied 911 on his phone and stepped inside. The place was empty except for people hanging upside-down from...it looked at first like a hole in the air. His mind didn't want to comprehend the pure nothing of it. Something black and long dangled people by their feet, so their hands were about eye-level off the ground. He saw Janet, Markus, his most impatient advisor, the captain of the fishing boat, the FBI agent in charge of his case...all the people who had wronged him since his life went off the rails.

Excepting the three FBI agents with guns who burst in behind Simon and demanded he put his hands over his head. Simon jumped and obeyed. They moved up to arrest him, but the shadows of the warehouse bulged somehow and a man dressed in an expensive suit melted out of them. He told one FBI agent to turn his gun on another. The man did so at once and suddenly the FBI agents were shouting at each other. The man spoke again and the second trained his gun on the third and fell silent. Then he did the same and all three stood motionless.

Meeting the Abyss
Smiling, he came forward and hugged Simon. “My son,” he said. Now that it was quiet, Simon noticed he had a pronounced accent. “You have come back to me at last.” He went on to explain to Simon how he had collected all these people who did him wrong. Their lives belonged to Simon now. He could kill them or let them go, but before he decided he should know many things.

The man in the suit explained that he was Gaetano of Palermo, Simon’s ultimate father. His blood ran in an unbroken male line across Europe and over the ocean until it finally stopped in Simon’s young veins. He was Gaetano’s last mortal heir, the fruit of his living son, Paolo, whom he believed lost when the Normans conquered Sicily. But Paolo lived and only a century ago Gaetano secured proof. The blood told and now that Simon stood before him, he could only see Paolo in him. He had come nine hundred years to be reunited with his beloved son and he had a miraculous gift to share.

Simon inched away, barely keeping his pants dry. Gaetano begged him to stay, or started to and then slipped into a different language. He pleaded as Simon reached for his phone. Gaetano’s eyes lit up. He returned to English, praising Simon for his mastery of these modern wonders. Simon hesitated, completely unable to grasp what was going on. The darkness rose up and lifted the phone out of his hand.

Simon stared into the void. Something moved within it, invisible but there. Something vast, like the ocean. His mind groped for an explanation and came up empty. The void grew nearer and nearer, until it engulfed him. Darkness raced across his skin, not a shadow but a thing with real substance in defiance of everything he knew about the universe. It sank into his ears. It pressed at his eyes. Simon felt it pry his mouth open and he gasped, then inhaled. It pulsed and something inside Simon, more than the darkness, pulsed with it. A web of midnight spread through his body and Simon’s mind turned in strange ways. He had, he could have, no secrets from the cold ebon infinity that permeated him. He was its shadow of flesh. All of his memories shifted somehow. He distantly realized he had stopped shivering, stopped even breathing. A new darkness, a warm one, rose within him and Simon receded.

He woke in Gaetano’s arms, barely breathing. The cold darkness kept him from the hard floor. Gaetano called him Paolo and explained that he had felt the touch of the Abyss, that which was before God spoke Let There Be Light, the darkness that was over the spirit of the deep in the time when the earth was formless and void. There was no knowledge that could be more forbidden. As he spoke, Simon felt a new burning fire kindled inside him. He had to know what all that meant. Gaetano looked into his eyes. Then Simon felt a sudden pain followed by ecstasy as the shadow descended again.

Four times Gaetano took Simon into the Abyss and four times he emerged, each experience more potent than the last. Simon begged Gaetano for another journey, but his father- No, Gaetano? No… It was all confused in Simon’s mind. He kept thinking both at once. The person holding him said that it was too late now. Dawn would come soon and he must be away. But first, what should be done with the three FBI agents?

Simon looked at them and it took a moment to recognize them as living beings instead of mere things. “Oh...They should give me all their money and go away. And stop bothering me.” Gaetano looked each in the eye and instructed them to do just that. One by one they came up and emptied their wallets at Simon’s feet, then left.

Gaetano helped Simon to his feet and ushered his captives into the back of a van. None spoke or moved on their own. Another silent man drove the van away. Gaetano sighed and said he should have thought to arrange horses. But Simon could call a machine, yes? Simon obediently used his phone and called a cab. He and Gaetano parted ways outside Simon’s apartment.

Simon slept the day away, only the Abyss in his dreams. He woke not sure that he hadn’t dreamed everything. He had a voicemail from Markus telling him that they must meet the next night at an extremely expensive restaurant. It had a dress code, so he must go to a tailor. He should use Markus’ name and pay with a card he found find in his pants pocket.

Now Simon knew he was dreaming, but he checked his pants anyway. Inside he found a credit card so exclusive it had a five-digit yearly fee. Immediately he looked outside. The FBI van was nowhere to be seen. He dressed and left for the university, but couldn’t stop thinking about the card in his pocket. He stuck it into an ATM and asked for a $20 cash advance. To Simon’s amazement, it worked. He had to go to that tailor!

The tailor took Simon’s card and measured him for a suit, promising that for this much money it would be ready first thing in the morning. It was. Simon wore it to the restaurant, where he was taken up to a private dining room. He and Gaetano had the place entirely to themselves. Calling him Paolo from the start, Gaetano began to relate the story of their family. He knew it by heart, a dizzying array of men who beget other men. A surprising number were sailors of some kind. Many had been to war.

Five separate times, one of Simon’s ancestors had risen to nobility. Most had lost their titles in some misfortune or other, but Simon was still an unacknowledged knight of the Austrian Empire and a count in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. These titles were his by right and Gaetano would supply him with the proofs necessary to assert his claim, though he knew that all the lands and revenues associated with them had been seized long ago and would not be restored.

Simon objected. He knew for a fact that his family was mainly Dutch and Norwegian. Gaetano brushed that off, going back over the dizzying lineage until he reached an ancestor who came to the Spanish Netherlands -Simon got out his phone and began looking up place names- from Barcelona the first was ennobled but died without issue. All this provided he was Catholic, Gaetano amended almost as if it didn’t need to be said.

Gaetano did not understand what a Wiccan was, but it was the closest thing Simon could come up with. He hadn’t thought much about religion in a decade. He tried pagan next, which Gaetano did understand. Simon could convert from Islam. He would see to getting a bishop to write the documents. Simon tried to explain his actual beliefs, but the Abyss seemed to swallow them up. Gaetano waved it away; he would see to it. There would be Baptism, Communion everything done properly.

After the waiters left and Simon’s food was gone, Gaetano began to explain more about how the blood told. A lesser breed would have quailed before the Abyss, yet he could see the hunger on Simon’s face. To seek it was a beautiful thing, what Simon was born for just as he was born to rule over lessers. Gaetano quizzed him in detail about his mortal life, constantly interrupting to point out where Paolo had most been himself or recalled his ancestors.

Then they came to the matter of Gaetano’s true gift to his Paolo. A limousine, which Gaetano complained was nothing near so elegant as a proper carriage but would have to do, took them back to the warehouse. All those who had wronged Simon hung from the darkness again. Another flash of pain followed by endless ecstasy as the Abyss swallowed Simon whole, over all too quickly.

Gaetano explained that a man must punish those who have wronged him. The lives of his captain, Markus, Janet, and the FBI agent belonged to him. What would Paolo do with them? Hate no longer burned inside Simon. Instead he felt a cold stillness. He was like someone else took the razor from Gaetano’s hand and drew it smoothly across Janet’s throat, then the FBI agent and finally the captain. That left only his friend Markus. Simon paused, then turned away and dropped the blade. Markus only did him accidental harm. He didn’t deserve anything.

Gaetano put his hands on Simon’s shoulders. He understood. Paolo was not used to taking lives yet, but he made a very good start. Soon it would become easier. In only a few days, they would be home. Simon objected. He had his PhD to finish. Then he had to explain to Gaetano, only vaguely aware of the corpses behind them. It took a while, but Gaetano understood. Simon had a dignity to earn, in the way of this world. He collected the credit card from Simon and allowed three months for it all to be done.

With all the setbacks he suffered, that was an almost impossible timeline. Simon did it anyway. Every time he began to flag, he remembered the Abyss waiting for him and redoubled his efforts. He finished the research, wrote the code, tested it, fixed it, fixed the fixes, rewrote much of it, and finished with two weeks to spare. Dr. Simon Dykstra walked directly from his defense to a car that took him to a flight to Perle Perdu.

Gaetano greeted Simon in a lovely penthouse, just recently rebuilt, and eased him into the Abyss for his most amazing journey yet. When Paolo woke, he saw Markus kneeling before him with his throat bare and waiting. This time there was no hesitation. As he fed, Paolo felt the Abyss within him.

Life after Death
Gaetano was an indulgent sire. He had high expectations, but gave Paolo room to meet them in his own fashion. In turn Paolo accepted his correct name. Simon’s life remained important to him, and his skills invaluable, but Simon passed away with the Abyss’ touch. He easily became the person that Paolo used to be. Likewise Simon’s father and mother were not Paolo’s, so it didn’t matter that Gaetano arranged their deaths. If not ideal, they had been for the best in the end. Markus’ death caused occasional pangs of guilt, but Paolo knew that he had to feed or die in that moment. It was self-preservation.

In exchange for his services in rearing his long-lost son, Gaetano asked only that Paolo arrange things so he might more easily interact with the modern world. It was an unpleasant place, but the kine had many clever inventions and Gaetano had fallen sorely behind since he came from Europe in 1790. He encouraged Paolo to put his other skills to use too. The FBI now knew that Simon Dykstra’s misdeeds were the work of an embittered rival who confessed it all in her suicide note, so he was free to act as he liked.

Paolo slowly made a place for himself in Pearle Perdu, carefully staking out a niche independent of his sire and turning the fruits of his hacking into legitimate investments in the city’s rebuilding through a complex array of shell companies. They remain on good terms, but Paolo established himself separately five years ago and has been largely content since.

Domain Paolo has heavily invested in the redevelopment of De Cyprès, a middle class subdivision of Perle Perdu that has recently been reoccupied. His investment came with suggestions that every building contain at least one room completely isolated from daylight “for complete privacy” and he’s made sure he can easily bypass the security systems and pick all the locks used. His own home is here as well. The neighbors believe that he works in computers and legally can’t discuss details...but he’s happy to come over in the evenings if something’s gone wrong with their machines.

Generation Paolo is of the blood of Gaetano of Palermo. He knows his ancestry all the way back to [Lasombra], but Gaetano has cautioned him that he can only be sure of his grandsire and great-grandsire, kindred that Gaetano knew in his youth. He believes they live still, just as [Lasombra] does, but that they now dwell in the Abyss itself. To the best of Gaetano’s knowledge, Paolo is the last and youngest in both the kindred and mortal lines. Because modern people require surnames, he adopted Costa in honor of his line’s long connection to the sea.

Resources Paolo’s parents left him a modest inheritance, but it largely burned up over the course of graduate school. Gaetano offered to stake Paolo a substantial sum, which Paolo refused to both their satisfaction. Instead he collected startup capital a mix of computer crimes and off-site security consultancy. Paolo has always been exceptionally discreet in such things, taking every precaution to avoid discovery and, above all, tracing it all back to him. He has a set of hardware he uses only for illegal activity, including a rotating cast of cheap laptops he mostly uses on public wifi. The money from ill-gotten gains, which Paolo no longer strictly needs but enjoys getting, is carefully laundered through a web of offshore accounts and shell companies before it comes into his hands when those companies hire his consultant services. He in turn invests the cash in Perle Perdu’s reconstruction and recovery.

Deep Slumber In Paolo’s dreams, the Abyss always seeks and consumes him in its darkling wonders. It’s a blissful, spiritual experience that loosens his ties to the flesh.

Hunted Like a Dog Shortly after, perhaps even before, Paolo’s embrace Lasombra loyal to the Sabbat learned that Gaetano sired a childe. Believing him too powerful to attack casually, they’ve settled on Paolo as an ideal victim. Paolo understands this and fears the Sabbat, though he also harbors dreams of fighting them off in such a grand style that they never try again...if he could somehow do it and not shatter the Masquerade. He is convinced the Sabbat are worthless rabble, but they are many and without compunction. Gaetano especially warned him to be wary should the Sabbat come in peace, for they may try to yoke him with blood magic.

Vulnerable to Silver Gaetano has explained this to Paolo as a curse of their blood in particular, different from that of other Lasombra. One of his blood ancestors refused to embrace a Maltese witch. In her wrath she called down the moon upon all their line.

1) How old is your character and when was he/she embraced?

Paolo was 27 when he was embraced in 2007.

2) Why is your character in Perle Perdu? Obviously for a home, but did his or her sire send her, is her bloodline encouraging him her to establish room for growth for them all? Etc. Are they on a diplomatic mission, or on the run etc?

Gaetano brought Paolo to Perle Perdu after establishing himself there. He hasn’t explained why he settled on the town, only that he was a relatively recent arrival when the hurricane hit.

3) Related: What are your character's long term goals and dreams?

Paolo’s concerns are largely still those of a mortal, though Simon’s politics are far less important to him. He wants to be rich and prove himself to his sire. Since his embrace he has converted to Catholicism, albeit of a decidedly Lasombra sort. He believes in the primacy of the spirit over the flesh, but has decided that the spirit is a second-order being. It is a shadow of the Abyss and the spirit’s shadow in turn is the flesh. The Abyss’ proper shadow is the traditional god and by transgressing some of the traditional edicts, Paolo expresses his faithfulness to the true first thing. As such, he has a longer-term goal of thoroughly exploring the potential of Obtenebration.

4) Does your character have mortal friends or family in the setting? Do they know of you even if (hopefully) they don't know you are a vampire?

Paolo’s mortal family, at least the ones that mattered to Simon, are all dead. However, he retains one mortal connection. His long-ago goth friend Jacob, now married to that swimmer, got a corporate job that recently transferred him to Perle Perdu. They met again when his name appeared on some documents that Paolo had unauthorized access too. For reasons he doesn’t entirely understand, he staged coincidental meeting. Jacob recognized him and they’ve rekindled their friendship, though Paolo frequently thinks of ways he could make use of his old friend.

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