Lord Demitri Paschiole
Born to a noble house of Passaro 876 years before Nosferia’s founding. Dimitri was a career politician and officer at a young age. He was known for his cunning the courts of Passaro and for his brilliant strategies as a general during one of many times when Passaro was at war with Harlea. However, he was far from a kind man, and instituted many brutal ways of combating Harlea psychologically as well as on the battlefield. His memoir, On The Minds of My Enemies by Dimitri Paschiole, he details his use of raids and public humiliation of enemy officers to demoralize his enemies. He goes on further to describe how he utilized his position to further humiliate and demoralize his defeated opponents in meetings following the war after treaties were signed and peace was underway in order to help Passaro maintain a position of power over Harlea. He said within his memoir “No man, no matter how victorious, may assert himself greater than those who cannot look upon his countenance without stifling judgement or a boisterous laugh. Your enemies, even in times of peace, must know in the deepest part of their hearts that they are in fact lesser than you. Should they rise to this, you may allow them an inch of respect, but no more.” Dimitri’s standing in the courts of Passaro in his time was controversial. Some lauded him as a genius, while others decried him as The Bastard of Venicciero.
On the year of his fortieth birthday, Dimitri fell ill and though he remained active in that time, he spent a great deal of his efforts, and his family fortune, to find a cure for the disease which he had contracted. No mages, apothecaries, or other medically inclined professionals could figure out what was killing him, let alone how to cure it. He seemed to be doomed to die. It would be found that the disease was arcane in nature. In addition to this, the energies found in Paschiole’s body matched that of an artifact he had received on his fortieth birthday. An artifact exhumed from Carcaan and gifted to the noble that had been touched by Blightfire. It was a statue of the Carcaanite god Kimesh, god of good fortune. There was one man in Dimitri’s court who came forward and offered him a cure for his disease. He confessed that he was the Familiar to a vampire lord within the region who had maintained a great deal of secrecy as to his identity to avoid conflict with the various churches of the region. The Vampire lord in question was offering to turn Dimitri in exchange for influence within his inner court. Dimitri was willing to accept the offer, but had asked for time to consider the options he had.
Like any strategist, he sought to learn more about his playing field for this and consulted a multitude of loremasters and experienced vampire hunters in order to better understand what being turned entailed. Unsurprisingly, he had those whom he had consulted murdered to keep them quiet as to his pursuits. Dimitri accepted the lord’s offer, and knowing full well that this vampire would have near complete control over him after turning him, had plans set in place to assassinate the vampire lord shortly after being turned. He hired an assassin well versed in Vampire lore to kill the Lord a few days after Dimitri was turned in order to give Dimitri time to recover. Dimitri then used the help of one of his court mages to alter his memory so that he could not be compelled to reveal his plan to the Vampire Lord after being turned.
With the one who sired him dead, Lord Paschiole turned his attention to his rulership of his region as a vampire without being under the control of another interest. Dimitri set to work with his court mage to conceal his Vampiric nature so that he could resume his position as Lord of Vinicciero. He spent the next seven hundred years, subtly manipulating the region into believing that he was his own successor through the use of powerful illusion magics. Unfortunately, this stunted his ability to progress to higher positions of authority within the region, but “The Paschiole Line” was secured and he could maintain his region without any credible threat to his power.
When the time of The Unification War came, Dimitri maintained much of the resistance against Invictus Argol’s assaults. He would not reveal his identity as a vampire to other vampires in Passaro let alone Unturned within the country. He played a delicate game of watching Argol’s campaigns across the continent unfold while feeding him information through spies and intermediaries, all the while thwarting Nosferian invasions over the decades. During the Passaroan Campaign, Paschiole remained anonymous. He fed the resistance efforts and the Nosferian forces both false and helpful information to keep them fighting for years, drawing out the campaign a full decade longer than it would have if Nosferian forces had simply conquered the region. Dimitri would later come forward to Invictus and confess that he had allowed the war to continue for so long. When asked why, he told Argol that warring for so long would fatigue the people of Passaro and break the people’s spirit. He knew that the Nosferian ranks had too much stamina for war to tire of it and not just grow impatient. He also wanted to test that stamina to ensure that Nosferia’s foundation as an empire was strong enough to hold. He needed to know how long it would take for their impatience to give way to mistakes, and whether they made war for the benefits that could be reaped, or for the sake of bloodlust.
Argol, impressed by Dimitri’s forward thinking named him Lord Regent of Passaro. In the time since being given the position, Passaro has become both a bastion of Vampire nobility and a foremost example of Nosferian military might. Paschiole has maintained Passaro well and quelled most if not all resistance in the area. It was his idea to build as many prisons and forts as their are in the region to demonstrate how secure the empire was. Paschiole has formally retired as a commander on the battlefield. He has maintained his position as a man behind his desk in all the time since the end of The Unification war. He trains and keeps himself sharp, but has more interested in maintaining the latticework of his region than getting his hands dirty.
Dimitri maintains a purely professional standing with the other regents. He confides in none of them and regularly keeps watch on their activities in the event that he may need to make an enemy of any of them. He maintains respect for each of the other Regents for their various strengths, but views everyone around him as pieces in a constantly changing game. The only individuals he does not play this game with are The Emperor and his Hands. He understands full well that he cannot out fight Argol, he cannot out think Penderghast, and he cannot out plan Overton. Unlike most of his opponents, they have been given time to learn from their mistakes, and Paschiole knows better than to try the same strategies twice on an opponent.
Dimitri is an average sized Vampire of human origins who appears to be of healthy middle age. His pulled back hairline is his most obvious defining trait as a vampire turned in later years. He has an olive complexion and red eyes with dark hair. Often times he sports a well groomed goatee in true Passaroan fashion. Most are unaware of this, but his body is heavily scarred as though it were burned in patches due to the disease which afflicted it before his being turned. He often wears Passaroan finery accented with pieces of ceremonial armor. His saber is famously encrusted on the basket hilt with several smoothly cut rubies. He is quoted as saying ,“ True dignity with age comes at the expense of vanity and for the price of care. An aged wine does not taste so sweet when kept in a box, but if the bottle is kept in polished condition, it cannot be denied a sense of quality. Even if there is marring on the cork.”
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