Julia Kincaid
From Circle Of The Crone
Player - Spider Wingate, of Phoenix, Arizona
Current Name - Julia Kincaid (Prefers being called Kincaid by all but her most intimate associates.)
Known Aliases from the past - Nicola di Milan, Mariyah Amat Al-Khafid
Clan - Daeva (Status 0 - Infamy. Some time back due to quarrels within the more admired ranks of the clan she rejected her standing within the clan and until recently has taken glee in rubbing her outcast status into other Daeva's faces.)
Age - Exact Age unknown, known as an Elder, believed to be well over a thousand years old.
Location - Phoenix, Arizona where she is currently both the Hierophant and the Imperial Prince of the Valley of the Sun and Sedona
Known Students/former students - Angelo, Roland le Moissonneur di Milan, The Imkhullu
Specialties - Binding/banishing magics and study of non-vampiric forms of bloodmagic
Brief history - From story and her own words Kincaid claims to have been embraced in the dying days of the Sassinad Persian Empire. From there, when the Empire fell, she began the life of a quasi-nomad traveling first east to India and then slowly making her way to Europe and moving back and forth through it for centuries. While she is most known for the large amounts of time spent in Italy and Western Russia, other Kindred tell of meeting her all over Europe and Northern Africa with no rhyme or reason apparent to her travels.
She vanished from the world's stage during the aftermath of WWI and through WWII and simply refuses to talk about why or what happened to her. Its an ill kept secret belief that she was in Germany during the war and as vampires are prone to do when faced with no other information to the contrary wildly conflicting stories of what she was doing circulate from the humanitarian to the dark and evil.
After the war she re-appeared in Phoenix and has lived there since, guiding not only the Acolytes as Hierophant but the growth of the city itself. Until recently, the Acolytes of Phoenix were officially and strictly politically neutral and while the other Vampires played games of politics amongst themselves the Acolytes, as guided by Kincaid, focused their attentions on the Metropolitan area itself and made it what it is today - a international metropolitan area, a growing powerhouse of industry and business, a good place to raise families or retire. The Valley of the Sun is the manifestation for the Acolytes of Northern Arizona of the creed to Create. The City itself is their act of worship, their creed, their prayer. And for Kincaid it is her greatest success.
Recently the looming troubles of the Nation and region around Phoenix has forced the Acolytes to cease their neutrality. And has forced Kincaid into a role she has long avoided - Princedom of the Valley of the Sun, of Sedona, of Prescott and all points in-between.
Over the centuries, she has been frequently seen in close alliance and love affairs with high ranking members of the Invictus and the Ordo Dracul. So close in fact that at times she seems almost more a member of those covenants on the outside that her own. The depth of knowledge she has on both covenants is almost frightening and only slightly outweighs her associations and understanding of the Lancea Sanctum. Further, she is the Matriarch to the di Milan lineage and until recently the vast majority of her huge brood were not followers of the Acolyte way. But this has started to change as more and more Daeva of her line are acknowledged as members of the Chorus and more and more as full members of the Covenant.
Philosophy - Kincaid professes to be a follower of the Path Material which is the Path of Self or the Left Handed Path. This reality to her is a Lie, a falsehood and a hellish prison and she seeks to overcome it and transcend into the True World which lies beyond. There are two paths to do this - the Path Spiritual where in you deny your desires and ties to this world and thus escape it - or the Path Material wherein you revel in your desires and ties until they no longer hold interest and you can escape it. While she accepts both paths are valid, it is known that she holds followers of the Path Spiritual in some contempt and pity seeing it as the lesser of the paths because it still allows room for the Gods.
She sees the Gods as being part of the fabric of the Lie and thus unworthy of her worship. She does not view the Crone as a God/dess and in fact seems to believe she was just an exceptional mortal and thus is also not worthy of worship. Instead she says she respects the Crone's teachings and follows them as a guide on her path but does not subjugate herself to them.
This outlook has lead to some tension within the Acolytes as she has recently started to take more students (something historically she was loath to do.) Her rejection of any form of Worship, her tendency to be bloody, callous, inventively cruel beneath her smile, the credo of "Apotheosis through degeneration", and her long associations with other Covenants has lead some to speculate on what she has up her sleeve. Old rumors of heresy and betrayal have started to surface again as Kincaid preaches more and more the Path of Self. But in the rumored thousand plus years she has walked, there is no evidence that she has ever once done anything against the Acolytes. They may not understand her or like her, but Kincaid has always done everything to support and strengthen her own Covenant - whether as lover, teacher, mentor, or destroyer.
