Harpy of Siddim

Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?
—Charles Baudelaire

Faye White, “The Harpy of Siddim”

Clan: Nosferatu
Affiliation: Byzantium Coven
Role: Torturer, Enforcer

When the Byzantium Coven cannot obtain results through seduction, extortion, or pleasure, they turn to Faye White, the Harpy of Siddim. The least attractive Cainite in a coven renowned for its beauty, hatred has frozen Faye’s features into a cold mask, and her attention to hygiene is deplorable. Her wild blonde hair is frequently caked with blood, her jagged teeth are translucent grey, and her fingers are stained from rooting among the delicate organs of her “clients.” Frequently appearing stark naked, when clothed she wears greasy biker gear and a battered cowboy hat, and sometimes accessorizes with the severed body parts of her most recent victims.

History

Of course, even a Nosferatu harridan was made, not born, and the tale of Faye White is a tragic one. Born in Poughkeepsie in 1926, Faye is the daughter of Sergeant Sheridan White, a tank commander whose M5 Stuart took a direct hit from the Germans at El Guessa Heights. Dying in a Tunisian field hospital, White managed to write a letter to his teenage daughter Faye and entrust it with a homebound friend, an ammunition loader named Leo Battaglia. Leo made it all the way to New Jersey before running afoul of another veteran in a Newark saloon. Unfortunately for Leo, Sergeant Thacker’s war was long over, and had been fought with muskets. After too many jokes about his “ugly mug” and “You kiss your wife with that face?” the Nosferatu dragged Leo outside and smashed his head into a fire hydrant, then peeled off his face with Leo’s own trench knife. Finding White’s letter in the corpse’s pocket, the barely-literate vampire misunderstood its contents, believing that Sheridan’s family was actually Leo’s. Thacker decided to pay them a visit in Poughkeepsie. Wearing Leo’s face as a mask, Thacker tied up Faye and forced her to watch and he beat and raped her mother. Faye was then Embraced against her will, coming to unlife the following night and served her battered mother as sustenance. Displaying an impressive degree of willpower, Faye resisted for two full nights, but on the third she murdered and drained her mother, then moved on to the family dog.

Thacker took the miserable fledgling back to Newark and presented Faye to his pack, a motley crew of vampires calling themselves “Satan’s Bloodhounds.” Composed mostly of Brujah Anarchs, the gang accepted the tribute, and Faye White became the most wretched form of fledgling, a blood slave known as an “elixir mixer.” Feeding only at the gang’s pleasure, once Faye’s body had alchemized human blood into Kindred vitae, her veins were diablerized with little concern for her own health or well-being.

Over the course of twelve endless months, Faye used her wits and cunning to keep herself alive, and the threat of True Death was constant. Fortunately her Sire’s blood was potent, and even as her body became uglier, her vitae remained pure and sweet. By 1946, she had miraculously convinced Thacker than she had forgiven him, and was ready to accept her new life as one of Satan’s Bloodhounds. By now, Faye’s “moxie” had earned her the grudging respect of the gang, and some had come to think of her as a mascot. Informed that her “initiation period” was over, Faye was released from bondage—on the condition that she find her own replacement. Resigned to yet another fresh hell, Faye returned to Poughkeepsie and looked up Mr. Moyer, her high school guidance counselor, who had once informed Faye she was “not Vassar material.” She dragged Moyer from his home and Embraced him on the way to Newark, where he became the gang’s new mixer until one of the Bloodhounds carelessly drained him dry. Faye continued to play the part of willing progeny, lapping up every ounce of pain and humiliation and seducing her Sire with flattery. In the late 1950s, the gang acquired motorcycles and changed their name to the Midnight Riders. Allied with the Setites, the Anarchs relocated to Bridgeport, where they began running guns, drugs, and human slaves from New Jersey into New England.

One night in 1978 the gang triggered the wrath of a Sabbat neonate named Rose Mary Lynch, the former singer of the satanic rock group Baphomet. The Midnight Rider’s latest unwilling blood slave, Otto Khan, was a former bandmate of hers, and the Tremere antitribu had just discovered his whereabouts. After burning down their Bridgeport clubhouse, Mary began hunting the Midnight Riders to extinction. It was the opportunity Faye had been waiting for, and she betrayed her pack, sending a retainer to the Sabbat with a list of known havens and safehouses. Making contact with the Sabbat Fury, Faye offered to take a more active role. A month later, the vindictive pair cornered Sergeant Thacker in a trailer-park brothel outside Wilkes-Barre. After Mary paralyzed Thacker with Tremere magic, Faye butchered her Sire, chopping the Nosferatu into pieces and feeding his wriggling nuggets of flesh to a pair of enghouled dogs. When Faye separated her Sire’s face and rolled it up as a trophy, Mary welcomed her to the Sabbat.

Not satisfied with her vengeance, Faye spent the next year seeking out every human and ghoul who had cooperated with Satan’s Bloodhounds and the Midnight Riders. Deprived of Mary’s supernatural prescience and her biker connections, Faye turned to Roger and Kitty Plant, who were happy to set the fledgling on a demented killing spree. With help from the Plants’ network of informants, Faye located her targets, subjecting each one to an appropriate punishment before granting them the mercy of Leo’s trench knife. By the time her grim task was finished, Faye White was unrecognizable. A creature forged from spite and hammered by Nosferatu blood, she had become a twisted killing machine, driven by hatred and fueled by an endless reserve of self-loathing. Searching for purpose, Faye returned to the Plants, who offered her a position as the coven’s official torturer.

Current Role

After two decades of devoted service, Faye White remains the monster in the Byzantium’s basement, dealing exclusively with Roger and Kitty Plant and showing little interest in the broader world above. She dwells in a castaway train car in an abandoned tunnel near Viriconium, a fetid den the Plants refer to as the “Harpy’s Nest.” Performing most of her “services” in a canvas tent near her lair, the harpy leaves her nest only when charged with a special mission—“liberating” a shipment of drugs, “purifying” a rival massage parlor, “protecting” assets at Siddim; the kind of vaguely-worded assignments that heavies across the criminal underworld interpret in the language of violence. Every so often, a sympathetic Cainite expresses the desire to reach out to Faye and “hear her story,” but the last fledgling to attempt such a tête-à-tête returned with an antique harpoon thrust through her side.

Sources & Notes

The core of the Gotham Sabbat was first uploaded on 31 October 2000, but the Byzantium Coven was extensively revised during the August 2018 update. Faye White is admittedly a nasty piece of work, with some inspiration coming from Immortal Technique’s “Black Vikings” and Slayer’s “Dead Skin Mask.” The banner uses an image that’s supposed to be a succubus—? Good lord, I wouldn’t want to wake up to that face! I found it unattributed online, so I don’t know its provenance. It might be old old woodcut, it could be a modern ink drawing…? Ah, Pinterest.

Author: Great Quail
Original Upload: 31 October 2000
Last Modified: 1 September 2018
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
PDF Version: [Coming Soon]