Character Name:

Cade Tenebroso

The Tenebroso Dynasty

Hierarchy Position:
Elder

Personal History:
A mercenary turned vampire, Cade Tenebroso would tell you that he is exactly 902 years old and has been head of the Tenebroso army since 1200. Cade began his diabolical career at the age of 20 in the war torn country of Italy. His job, sneak in and kill officers while they slept. Cade performed this task with brutal and deadly efficiency, earning himself a place among the upper ranks of his own army. After 17 years of service, Cade had made a name for himself. Ghost stories were whispered amongst the townspeople both in his hometown and in the hometowns of rival countries. Officers no longer felt safe in their camps, or at the back lines. Many began to hide within the ranks of their troops, taking their chances with the enemy rather than a man they could not see.

The year was 1137, when Cade went in to battle for what would end up being his last time. The camp was just on the outskirts of Rome, 1000 men. It was a small force, easy to maneuver around for one man, a man such as Cade, but when he quietly entered the tent of the general, he was ambushed. There were fifteen guards surrounding his target, but Cade had something they did not. He held no fear of death. He had seen his death a thousand times, and welcomed it. He would die with honor, if he died in battle. However, Cade also had the determination to succeed and fulfill his duty to his army. He fought valiantly, and without fear. The cold of his eyes saw all fifteen guards fall to their deaths, and then, they saw the slow, painful, tortured death of the general.

But Cade did not escape without injury. He was gravely wounded in his struggle. His energy failed him as he reached the safety of his own camps. Wrought with fever for weeks, he laid in his tent struggling for survival. And survival came in the form of a special elixir prepared from spices and herbs carried especially in for the wounded mercenary.

One week later, Cade was back on his feet and preparing for yet another task, but he was stopped by his own general, Vasille Tenebroso. The news of Cade's successful missions had finally reached the King's ears. Too valuable to lose, Cade was embraced.

Cade's skills in the finer arts of torture and negotiation, battle stratagem and guerrilla warfare, quickly propelled him into a top-ranking position as a member of the Tenebroso Dynasty, and in the year 1200 he was sent to France as a negotiator. If negotiations failed, he was to dispose of them all.

It was in France where he met another Tenebroso Kindred, Amelia. She would become his wife, his Bonded, and his confidant. On a more personal level, Cade began to create a family with his Bonded. Together they jointly embraced four children. Two daughters, Francesca and Giselle, and two sons, Gabriel and Marek. Amelia had the contacts that Cade still sought, and Cade quickly learned how to use them for his own benefit. With her contacts and his, Cade became a man of information, but this information was to be his and his alone.

In the interim, Cade became involved with the dangerous assassin, Yvaine Tenebroso.  Politically and power driven, the two of them were constantly at odds, which only served to fuel the times when they were locked together in passion.  To secure such powerful bloodlines as their own, Yvaine and Cade embraced a daughter, Jude, whom he has no connection to beyond that of Sire and Childe.

No sooner than ten years had passed before Cade Tenebroso had become intimately involved in both Clan's business and personal matters on all levels, leaving him privy to every secret that the Tenebroso Family possessed.

Cade, however, relegated himself to becoming a silent business partner, and most of his time was spent on the "battlefield" during the more tumultuous years of Vasille's reign. Cade is no stranger to war, and was in fact Embraced for that purpose. He has waged wars and battles, made peace and coordinated assassinations in Vasille's stead for years. His position allows this. In fact, his position allows him total control over the clan, a perk he has never deemed fit to use. He is Vasille's "brother", closest friend, and comrade for centuries. He is a loyal member of the Family. But he has many secrets, the most prominent of which is his insatiable hunger for power.

It was this hunger for power that his Bonded saw, and wanted for herself. She negotiated with Vasille and Carolina behind closed doors. She wanted Cade's position, his power, and she wanted their daughter as Firstborn. Once promised those things, she set about slowly and deliberately destroying the one man she was supposed to have loved. Slowly, she began gathering Cade's contacts and using them against him and ultimately, against the Dynasty. Years passed between Cade and his wife, arguments ensued over the state of the Dynasty and their personal affairs both with money and other vampires. It wasn't uncommon for them to go years without speaking to each other, and on a cold, dark and silent morning, the woman Cade loved attempted to tear his mind apart. Using the bond they shared, she spiked their bond with anger and rage, images of torture and war, and she heightened it with her telepathy.

Had Cade not been a light sleeper and an insomniac, his mind would have been destroyed by nightfall. However, at the first sign of pain, Cade began using his own telepathic powers to close the bond and shield his mind from the attack. Slowly, mercilessly, and coldly, he entered her chambers, and as she laid on the bed with their daughter, Cade wrapped his hands around her throat and twisted. Her death was slow and painful at the bare hands of a mercenary. Once Cade had finished with his wife, he disposed of his daughter, staked her through the heart with a post from the bed. He left both their bodies in the backyard to burn with the rising sun, staying just long enough in the purifying rays to make sure they burned to ash.

This event is still whispered about in the darker circles of the night, but none would dare speak openly of the act that cost the Elder the woman and child he adored.

The very next night, the now stone cold and heartless Cade Tenebroso left France, headed for England, and never looked back. He had his contacts and his servants killed. Everything that reminded his of his time with his wife he had destroyed, save one place, his ultra modern haven in Honduras.

Once he arrived in England, he began rebuilding his contacts, and elevating his vast fortunes. In that time he embraced an fifth childe, Joost van Dousen. Cade was still a mercenary at heart, but he was now a businessman. A very successful, ruthless, and determined businessman. He applied his years in the battlefield to his financial ventures and won nearly every time, but as if to oppose his growing fortune, his liking of his clan diminished. With the deaths of his family, and the knowledge he gained about them some 20 years after their deaths, Cade now loathed and despised his family. Backstabbing. Devious. Underhanded. Snakes. However, he could not deny the fact that he was one of them. In truth, he had expected such ploys from his Family; it was, after all, what they were.

By 1802, Cade had more money than he could spend in 10 lifetimes living a lavish and luxurious lifestyle, and he did. Cade thrived on new technology. He had to have the latest technology and the best. Where other vampires loathed the changing times, Cade embraced them, and to spite his now well known hatred for his clan, the Tenebroso commander stands at his Sire's, and King's, side, loyal and vigilant. . . .

However, Cade kept his distance from New Orleans and from the States, preferring to stay overseas managing his money, his businesses, his secrets, and his power. Keeping his accounts silent and completely separate from the Tenebroso money, Cade's financial power and influence grew.

He waited and he planned for the perfect time to return to the Dynasty. His plans would not fail. His time came when the King, his Sire, disappeared for months in the Prague. His contacts came back to him with the rumor that the King was dead. It was then that Cade returned to the States, to New Orleans, to deliver the news that would shake the Dynasty to its very core. The King was dead.

Upon calling a council of the Tenebroso, Cade went for a walk with his new childe, bodyguard, and in his more lascivious moods, his lover. He didn't make it far down the street before his zealous bodyguard sensed something in the shadows. Cade, thinking it was a devious and conniving Tenebroso ordered the individual out of concealment. To his surprise, it was no Tenebroso, but an injured, waif-like, red-headed vampire. Taking her into his custody, he took her to the Tenebroso mansion, fed her, and stayed with her. By the end of the night, Cade had made a possessive determination to keep her, teach her, Sire her. She would be his and his alone.

Within 24 hours, the red-head known as Shadow, was Cade's; completely, possessively, bonded to him. Cade purchased her a plantation in a remote and shadowy location for her to practice her strange, but potentially useful shadow manipulation. Upon learning of her like for 1920's style music, he purchased a cabaret club, Le Chat Noir. This was the second time Cade had bonded, and he bonded this time for eternity or death, whichever came first. His bond was more valuable to him than his limitless cell phones, cars, havens, even his money. Material things faded, this bond was forever. This bond was his blood, his link, his open mind, thoughts and emotions, and he gave it to Shadow. It was and is Cade's most sacred possession. He would sooner kill that connection and the woman with it, than be betrayed by it again. More than once he has threatened that very consequence.

With the King's sudden return, Cade was forced to alter his plans, but not abandon them. With his contacts, his money, and his financial power . . . Cade stands again, in the background, patiently looming over New Orleans. In the coming nights the Tenebroso Clan as a whole would be tested with threats of other Clans moving into their territory and with a devastating blow from the Werewolves. Cade himself would be tested on a more personal level, and by the woman he loved and trusted.

Despite his threats, despite her knowing that they were anything but idle, betrayal proved once again to haunt the Elder. The Tenebroso falling from their perch in the face of an overwhelming Werewolf threat pushed them from their territory of New Orleans and into San Francisco. It was here that Cade's Bonded, Shadow, betrayed him with another man, a human no less. His first wife he killed for such a betrayal. His second he had come to love too much to harm and because of it there exists a strained fury between them that is soon to come to a head.

Cade is a silent, contemplative and manipulative man, making it hard for others to know what is going on behind his hard eyes. Rational in irrational situations, Cade has never lost his cool, and resorts to violence at the last moment possible. More often than not, this powerful Enforcer has no need to use violence. His past exploits speak clearly for him.

 
Face Representation:

Vincent Perez