True, chapter 3 should give us way more information and narrow speculation and make some of us history geeks very happy. Still to be honest I think both the Lilith and Artemis speculations were quite interesting and not that far of the mark, considering the information we had and some information devs gave you later.
Especially Artemis was quite close in a way, even though VG is much older and derives from a much older culture that influenced the Greek and Roman one through time.
She does seem to play or have played a similar role over time as Artemis as a goddess, with maybe an even higher role in her pantheon and closer to being a source, instead of being the source as Lilith would have been, of current vampires. My speculation is that the fact C is the heireia of a temple will come into play at a certain moment and her duty/burden as that priestess will play a role in the story unfolding and in the task MC was created for. (Where it will be interesting to find out if there was something special about MC that led to his creation which Ayshel would hate or it could have been almost anyone and it was mainly pure coincidence. I do not really believe last, but it may well be his compatibility with people like Andrew, Sharon and Laurie more as an ancient bloodline that made him the one chosen
).
Another quite firm speculation is by now that something/someone is hidden in that little town that Sharon became Archon of and that it is either something to be protected so it keeps asleep or will be the thing that will need to be stopped in the end.
What is quite unclear at the moment though is who are all aware much more is going on with that town and to what level and are players in the game instead of being just played, where there may well be different level players. Like C might both be a player when comes to MC and her duty while simultaneously being played by VG and maybe others. Virgil seems also a candidate whether for your reasons or different ones and possibly someone we already met like Kassandra that has flown a bit under the radar until now might be a bit more as she seemed.
Last of my speculations for the moment is that I do think Sharon will be more as she seems to be or thinks she is and is not that much of a sacrificial pawn as some may prefer. Not sure what path that will take though, whether she has a potential due to her bloodlines that she is unaware of or that she just has an unique combination of personal views, intelligence and skills. I strongly disbelieve though that MC ending up under the wing of Sharon was not setup and intended by one of the major players, whether that is VG or someone else with opposing or similar goals. (If something needs to stay asleep in that little town VG might not be the only one that wishes to keep it so even if some might want to awake it.
)
Good stuff
Both Ptolemy and LikesBlondes have said our mental meanderings on Calisto were pretty darn close. This means-
Calisto is very low generation-most likely 4th or 5th with a high likelihood of 4th. She is a Methuselah in every sense of what that meant in VtM. She was a high priestess aka Hierea for one of the Greek Goddesses. Given her apparent age as a voluptuous MILF though, she probably was not the high priestess for: Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena or Demeter as they would have had largely ceremonial figureheads who were virgins and promised to an influential figure in marriage after serving for their year. So we were off on that point, and in thinking Vision Girl was "simply" Artemis. This largely leaves only Hera who had MILFY high priestess types until they were too old to serve. So we got that wrong, but even in the Artemis tale Hera figures very large in Calisto's fate. So serving Hera and screwing Hera's husband or somehow gaining her ire could still fit. The part about Calisto having a childe that tried to kill her (probably influenced by Hera- definitely influenced according to myth) was even given a silent nod as it fits into the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor myths and Arcan her son could turn to a bear even as she can, and so our MC has bigger badder claws than mere wolf boys... So that was given a nod. Calisto does not fit into a clan archetype from VtM. She is between 4000-4500 years old plus or minus however long she was thralled to her sire (who may have been Artemis or some other goddess type for all we know, but she is ancient and beastly powerful)
The entire speculation about Calisto's line having difficulty siring was crap, and was debunked as being a misunderstanding of what was really occurring which was the transfer of the immense power of the blood of a Methuselah.
Virgil was not confirmed as her childe per se, but he is clearly cut from a different cloth than almost all of the posers in the city, including the most wanking poser being the prince. Virgil has his own agenda, and it plays rather nicely into the tale, that he could be a cat's paw for who is really moving against the city, or the agent of change, or perhaps (unlikely though) he has already committed the diablerie on another Methuselah and is not that much below the power level of Calisto. This is what I term the
nightmare scenario. It would explain why Calisto would not detect him if he is in fact her childe, as he would be very powerful, and presumably has access to at least some powers that Calisto may not have. Then again, this could simply be reading more into his subtle display of power of personality at the table while Sharon was drinking the prince's blood. This will be interesting to find out more about and either confirm some or all of this theory or debunk it entirely. If Virgil is her first childe, then he is within a few hundred years of the same age as Calisto, which would make him a fucking nightmare Methuselah as well. (this is strongly hinted at in terms of when I was wrangling about relative power levels, the MC is probably going to end up in the top 4 in the city currently, maybe top 5. This elite club would be (NOT counting Vision Girl or the "Thing out in Scottstown Yet)
1-Calisto, 2- Virgil if he is in fact Calisto's child, 3- Fabian, 4-MC (unless Cindy or Kassandra are more than they appear to be)
Princep and Marcus and Lord "Grayface Smirky What's His Fuck" are all probably about the same power level which is a tier down from the above. No one else in the city really has demonstrated much except that Eloise is a Hound, which at this point has been left vague but sounds vaguely like the Archons for a Justicar or perhaps agents of the city Sheriff, who at this point we do not know who that might be....
Sharon.... I am not sure that she is more or less than she seems-a really decent yet naïve 70 year old Vampire Teenager. This is of course
Unless we go back to some kind of unlikely Astrid conspiracies, in which case she may be something altogether different...... I think Sharon is a Ventrue equivalent in a town with few Ventrue types.
That said, Sharon is too self assured and cocky right now. There is an almost 100% chance that the princep fed her his blood in that glass of bloodwine. It would be quite the twist if he were somehow tied to her with more than simply (and most likely) belonging to the same clan/bloodline. (and somehow has already dosed her with blood previously as a part of her punishment for the past, or perhaps some closer undisclosed relationship)
Eloise is the only other clear and likely candidate for this bloodline, unless we give the princep's moronic bruiser boys more credit than they are due, though they most likely are just bound to him.. He does have an eclectic group of minions though, including a wolfboy. The girl, whose name escapes me at the moment, who greeted everyone at the Princep's soiree might actually be his childe... which might have potential for fun at some point. None of this really tells us, or even speculates us as to where Sharon actually came from in terms of her sire.
Who Sharon's sire is could become a key to determining just what role she plays, but honestly, with the MC's visions, and how accurate they have been, I think she may well be toast to some nefarious vampire plot of Calisto's, and that may a catalyst which will prompt the MC to act in one direction or another. On the other hand, she might be the one monster in the city that actually could save the soul of our MC so to speak.. Her approach to humanity seems to be unique amongst the top dwellers of the city, and so her sire may be someone who is on some kind of Golcanda like path, or perhaps just a decent sort like she is, or her sire might be a monster, which prompted her to be the opposite.
Other sorts of folk...
Marcius is probably not worth mentioning really. While he was big and bad before we started manifesting powers, I think he will quickly become irrelevant, and might be the first blood we draw as the MC in the vampire world (not counting our assist on the Feral Nos), which would make for an epic moment in the story for those who love Sharon.
Marcus- that scaly bastard knows something... I am not saying he is bad, or rather worse than the average pseudo elder of this city is, but he is more buff. He has style. He has the Nos Network. He knows shit. The fucker probably knows right where our missing Nos is, and possibly knows something about the monster hiding beneath Scottstown. Who knows? Maybe that ugly is more closely related to Marcus than we know....
Fabian.. you know, Fabian is also more than he seems. We already know that. Clearly.. Definitively.. Cindy....? Kassandra/Malia...? They are likely more than merely a door girl and a club owner. ALSO Who were the elders who came to the temple party where the MC was embraced? We have not seen them since. Were they from out of town??
So Fabian and Calisto are more expansive in scope than the other vampires in the city. **Virgil possibly excepted** Vision Girl is Global in scope and a rising gawd knows what. More in a second on that. Fabian though.... He is intriguing, and Sharon's dismissal of everything that is actually vampiric as we know it from our past associations with VtM demonstrates that her scope is quite local. Not quite a county rube, but certainly not as sophisticated and worldly as she would like to be seen as.
Fabian is probably some torqued up Tremere Arch Magi type, ready to betray Calisto, or melt anyone who crosses her... Hard to tell at this point..He is probably very old...and powerful. He is an agent for Calisto seemingly, yet also serves at the pleasure of the Princep....and Virgil... What is His game? That may well be a game changer, that requires action from our MC to either thwart or assist....
Vision Girl. So thematically it is hard to be much more potent than a 4-4.5k vampire... but Vision Girl is definitively from the proto cradle of civilization. She is closer to 7-10 thousand years old, and was as Ptolemy and LikesBlondes both put it, "As Calisto from Ancient Greece would be a myth or legend to modern Vampires, Vision Girl (a name they both liked and though was fun) is that degree of antiquity and legend to Calisto......
Is she Isis? Is she Ereshkigal the Sumerian Goddess of the Dead? (unlikely) Is she Bast? She is not Lilith of VtM fame, but could form a basis for the Judea-Christian-Islamic myths of an entity of that name..(she is not Lilith, simply illustrating the scope of This monster)
So yes here comes my theory, could she be Inanna who was the most important female deity of the ancient Sumerian period? Inanna was the goddess of love, war, and female fertility. (Twin of Utu the Sun God-proto Apollo, daughter of Enlil (the Sumerians had thousands of god and goddess figures throughout the centuries of development of the religion, and most were the kids of this fucker, the 10 most powerful are all related and he is one of the glue pieces... Enlil was the god of the Mountain and all foreign lands-Olympus anyone???)
In all accounts of Sumerian history, Inanna was primarily responsible for sexual love and procreation as the life-giving goddess of love, ensuring the prosperity of the land and its people-this would give the porn aspect of the novel some fire.... (Some scholars link her myth to the Greek and Jewish/Christian/Islamic faiths as having passed on into their doctrine in various forms- For our purposes this could well be the proto Artemis/Athena/Aphrodite
And Hera)
Inanna is said to have visited her other major sibling, her sister Ereshkigal, the goddess of the underworld and before she went, she told her vizier (I love that term) Ninshubur ( I am naming my next VtM character that, I swear to the Force) that if something happened to her and she did not return after three days, he was to alert the other gods.
With that, Inanna descended to the Underworld and approached Ereshkigal’s temple of lapis lazuli. She passed through the seven gates into the lands of the dead, and her clothes and jewels were removed piece by piece as she walked through each gate. Seven Gates, Seven Sacred symbols of power and protection. When she finally entered her sister's realm, she was naked and on her knees as a prisoner to her sister Ereshkigal who then for unclear reasons other than spite, murdered her. While some have disagreed with me on this, the imagery of the Naked murdered looking hot girl surrounded by a bloody haze could well be imagery that fits. Note that above I mention that Inanna is the proto goddess for many of the later legendary figures of Greek and other Western faiths. There are even ties that went east into the lands of India. She was an epic figure and like most gods, did not stay dead, largely due to the actions of her vizier informing one god after another until he found one willing to go rescue her.
One very cool fact, if you are a vampire/god/goddess is that of all the ancient cultures, only the Sumerian's religion is the fact that there is an absolute inferiority of men to gods(vampires?). In other ancient and modern religions, the faithful are afforded the comfort of life after death. According to the doctrines of the Sumerians, it is impossible for men to have any sort of paradise, which is reserved only for the immortal gods, not for mortal men. It is interesting that in Babylonia some 2k years later, the actual first concepts of heaven and hell were introduced to the nomadic tribes of Hebrews who were defeated in war and hauled off to Babylon not once, but twice, and then some time later the same thing to Egypt.
Back to antiquity though, the original concept of an afterlife with heaven and hell came from the Babylonians and early Zoroastrianism. So the ancient Sumerians prior had this concept that only the immortal gods (vampires) were entitled to life eternal.
Interesting studies. Speculation aside, I am very excited for this weekend!
Peace all Vamps!
