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Tremere was a powerful mage turned vampire. While he was mortal he was one of the founders of the Order of Hermes and creator of House Tremere, that would eventually become the vampiric Clan Tremere.

He tested many spells to create eternal life, but found them all fatally flawed. Finally, he concluded that the only form of immortality, without severely degrading the use of magic, was vampirism.[1] After successfully becoming a Cainite, he diablerised Saulot in 1133 CE. However, Saulot had manipulated Tremere into diablerising him, his soul still living inside Tremere's corpse. That body was infected with Vicissitude and reflected the inner struggle between Tremere and Saulot by becoming a huge white worm (and other bizarre shapes) up until around 1989.

Saulot has taken full control in 1998, and Tremere's soul took refuge in Etrius' body, then in Goratrix, whose soul was expelled into a mirror.

Biography

If you master magic, you can master others. If you master your mind, you can master yourself.
  — Tremere[2]

The tall, dark and foreboding Tremere was the vaguely tragic founder of the House and clan that bear his name. Tremere was a central European mage who was known for being cold-blooded, brilliant, and a radical. He had received his training under master Guorna, and was one of his senior pupils alongside a young Master Tytalus.

This pair of Guorna's pupils had not technically been invited to the event that marked the Pax Hermetica in 767 due to their youth and inexperience, but both of them attended nonetheless since their master had died after receiving the invitation. Once he was inducted into the Order of Hermes during the early Dark Ages, Tremere proved to be ambitious enough to create his own house (most Hermetic Houses were named after titles or mages who existed near the founding of the Order), as he was unwilling to yield to Tytalus, who had similar sentiments and founded House Tytalus instead.

As with other Hermetic mages, Tremere found that the encroaching, if nascent, Consensus was affecting vital Hermetic tools, in particular the longevity potions that allowed him and his peers to live for so long. Casting for solutions with his disciples, he eventually settled on a potion using vampiric blood that would (theoretically) provide all the benefits of vampirism without any of the side effects.

It half worked. Tremere and his councilors found themselves converted from a respected, Hermetic house into pariahs among the Order of Hermes and the vampires whose blood they had stolen to convert themselves into undead. Furthermore, with no knowledge of vampiric society, the fledgling bloodline found itself with no magical resources – the potion shattered their avatars, leaving them unable to work true magic.

Tremere rallied his students and launched an intensive program of research and rebuilding that shook vampiric society. They developed a blood-fueled imitation of Hermetic theory, the Thaumaturgy discipline, as well as horrors such as Gargoyles to defend the fledgling line. In the meantime, the Tremere searched out additional sources to provide them with social defenses against the vampires who, to a clan, seemed singly intent on exterminating them. Tremere learned about Antediluvians and resolved to create a clan by diablerizing one. He choose the relatively innocuous Saulot.

Again, the plan half worked. Tremere had the blood of an Antediluvian in his veins, as well as the soul (which was fully aware and already expecting the diablerie) of an Antediluvian facing him in spiritual combat. Knocked into torpor for centuries, Tremere was able to surface only briefly to guide the clan, and even then he risked Saulot employing the same tactic to destroy the clan in order to further his own inscrutable goals.

The monumental magic coursing through his body has wreaked havoc upon Tremere's physical body, leaving him, for the moment, quadriplegic and without a mouth. His countenance remains striking, however; dark browed and with piercing dark eyes; Tremere's pallid face reveals his vampiric nature. Though his features appear composed, almost disinterested, his eyes burn with intensity. A palpable aura of barely suppressed power crackles in the air around him whenever he walks around. At this point, Tremere usually wears dark, hooded wraps designed to hide his twisted torso. So potent is Tremere's aura of power that mortals and even some younger Cainites often feel compelled to drop to their knees in his presence.

In 1999, Tremere finally lost the war with Saulot, and he fled to the body of his former disciple Goratrix. At that point, along with his clan, he prepared for Gehenna by preparing rituals of a power previously unimagined.

These rituals also half worked. In one of the Gehenna scenarios, Tremere uses a potent ritual channeling all of humanity's true name to defeat the Tzimisce Antediluvian. The ritual backfired and turned what is left of humanity into part of Tzimisce.

Tremere is a case study in hubris; his brilliance led him and his fellows further down the road to damnation every step of the way. A weakness that echoed throughout his clan.

Version Differences

  • In the non-canon Red Death Trilogy, Saulot was killed by Tremere, manipulated by St Germain.
  • V20 presents an alternate continuation of the events detailed above. Here, Goratrix already claimed during the Dark Ages that he was, in fact, Tremere, having been forced outside his body after he was possessed by Saulot and that the thing that the Clan served was an abomination (likely referring to [Tzimisce] and Saulot struggling for control over the body). In this case, Tremere would have lost control over his Clan far earlier and be forced into the Sabbat, where he would have been most likely destroyed alongside the Tremere antitribu.[3]

Trivia

Character Sheet


Gallery

References

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