Know Your Kindred - Shahid
Posted by yafka on March 23, 2008
Name: Shahid
Clan: Nosferatu (Hajj)
Generation: 8th
Embraced: 1737
Shahid knows more than most others about Cairo’s Kindred population - particularly regarding matters of faith.
He became Kindred during one of the darkest times in Egypt’s history. The famine of the time was so bad that many people resulted to cannibalism. One trick would be for a starving household to send for a delivery and then attack and eat the delivery boy. Shahid was one of these unfortunate delivery boys.
He was able to escape his attackers despite missing most of his right leg. But he left a trail of blood that led his cannibalistic attacker right to him. As Shahid lay in the streets he prayed to Allah and thanked him for the life he had been given thus far.
The Nosferatu Ibn Ja’far came across the boy during one of his patrols. Ibn Ja’far heard the boy’s prayers and was moved that his faith remained unshaken. As the cannibal approached, Ibn Ja’far battered the attacker into an unrecognizable pulp. Then he turned to the boy and Embraced him. Shahid sees his Embrace not as a curse, but as a blessing that Allah gave him a second chance at life.
Shahid and Ibn Ja’far are very close and Shahid is his closest confidant, especially on spiritual matters, as Ibn Ja’far has long had a crisis of faith. But Shahid keeps secret that he has fallen in love with the Christian Nosferatu Petra, whose clan disfigurements appear as divine stigmata. Shahid worries that Ibn Ja’far would find love between a Muslim and a Christian abhorrent and/or confusing. Also she is the childe of Ibn Ja’far’s greatest rival, Shagaret al-Durr. So the relationship remains secret, but if it should be discovered Shahid is willing to fight to defend his love.
Shahid uses Obfuscate to conceal his true form from view. In addition he wears a full body galabiyya. Underneath his musculature is gray-green, ragged and torn. He walks with a severe limp because most of his right leg and right arm are missing from the cannibals who attacked him before his Embrace. Despite all his deformities, his eyes remain remarkably humane.
- Source Cairo by Night
