Name: Albert Ogthoven
Gender: Male
Actual Age: 483
Physical Age: 35
Nationality: Dutch
Occupation: Businessman, Pro-Cooperation lobbyist
Appearance:Personality: Albert is impulsive and opportunistic. He lives from one quick moment to the next with open eyes, using instinct, rather than any real forethought to guide him. He is changeable, and adaptable, and not a little unpredictable. As a result, he has a deserved reputation of flightiness and perhaps untrustworthiness, though he is not disloyal, per se. He does not seek to deceive people intentionally, it's just that his opinion is wont to change. His permanent state of flux might imply a relaxed, easy-going nature, but this is not strictly true. He is frankly hypocritical, expecting others to remain consistent in what they say and do and, while he is generally affable and well-mannered, he is also known to be extremely impatient with a hair-trigger temper, and generally somewhat volatile toward other vampires. While he would not consider himself a snob, he is a great believer in vampire hierarchy when it suits him, expecting deference and obedience from not just his progeny, but any vampire lower down in the pecking order than himself.
Attitude to The Age of the Vampire: Albert has been an integral part of the vampire liberation movement, and so The Age of the Vampire is, in a small way, down to him. Therefore, he is very emotionally invested in human-vampire cooperation, even though, after over four hundred years under the radar with total freedom to hunt, he finds it extremely difficult to stick to The Golden Rules. However, he thinks it's vital to set a good example, and will come down like a tonne of bricks on any vampire that upsets the balance.
Reason for being in Amsterdam: He is a Dutch national, was sired in the Netherlands and has generally stayed there.
Vampire Traits: As a reasonably oldish vampire, Albert is generally fairly powerful around the board, in vampire terms. Before the Age of the Vampire, he was a big old hunter, and so blood has always been a fairly vicious, thrill-seeking mission for him. Obviously things have to be a bit more sterile now, and so blood has become a little bit boring for him, if necessary. His compulsive behaviour is a great setback for him, though he has developed techniques of distracting himself.
Status: Fledged
Sire Name: Phillipe Arizola
Sire Details: Phillipe Arizola is a Spanish vampire that Albert is no longer in contact with, who sired him as a Dutch agent to act on his own behalf.
Progeny: In his time, Albert has sired multiple progeny. Those of importance will be listed here. If you want Albert to have sired your vampire character, let me know and we can probably work it out.
Progeny: Alexander Thompson
Progeny Details: Alexander is Albert's most recent 'acquisition', sired at the end of the . While Albert has experience of successfully siring vampires, Alexander was something more of a challenge, and their relationship is basically unchanged since then. Alexander is needy, demanding, difficult and emotionally unstable. While Albert takes his responsibility to his progeny very seriously, a little part of him does resent the stability he is forced to try to maintain for Alexander's benefit.
Progeny: Jennifer de Sauveterre
Progeny Details: Jennifer was, like the rest of Albert's progeny, a tactical acquisition, a secret he never really kept from her. She was not his first progeny, but probably the one he has connected with most. Their relationship was that of a twisted romance shortly after her turning, and the two remained together in one sense or another for almost a century. However, his negligence and her dissatisfaction with him drove them apart and the two never met for almost a further century. Now that she has returned to Amsterdam, with motivations other than to return to her sire, he does not know quite what to think. He completely expects her to return to him altogether, romance and all, and at the same time to volunteer The Voltaire into his little empire, knowing full well that she won't.
History: Albert Ogthoven was born the son of a farmer just about in the Northern regions of the modern-day Netherlands (a country that did not then exist). His little life was largely without incident, and, typically of the time, inherited the farm from his father when he passed away, and continued in his exploits. The twist of fate that sucked his life into international politics still beggars belief.
The historical context was the Dutch revolt, in which the Northern regions of the modern-day Netherlands broke free from their Spanish rule. What followed was a long struggle between the two parties, in which the newly-formed Dutch Republic fought back against Spain's attempts of resubjugation. All of this was of little consequence to Albert Ogthoven, until Phillipe Arizola got involved. Phillipe Arizola was a Spanish vampire, invested in Spanish victory and the defeat of the Dutch republic. The plan was simple; by siring a Dutch vampire, Phillipe would create a sleeper agent that, once fledged, could be inserted in the upper echelons of Dutch society as a spy.
The former peasant was quite content with this plan. Having been integrated into a world not mentioned in the Bible or spoken of at the church, and thrust into wealth and even some power, ideas of loyalty or religion were inconsequential. Unfortunately for Spain, the Dutch Republic went from relative strength to relative strength, and, as Albert's mission grew ever less possible, their mutual interest in one another faded. One was a Spanish aristocrat with dying interests in the Netherlands, and the other was a Dutch noble. They had nothing in common, and the whole thing had the tone of an awkward breakup.
Ultimately, Albert realised that he would have to disappear. One could not simply 'live forever', and so, having established himself as one of the four burgemeesters of Amsterdam (sort of mayor), he retired to the countryside as soon as he felt his immortal cover might be blown. He built himself a manor (originally titled De Landhuis van Ogthoven) in the country and established himself as a landlord to local farming peasants. With sympathy for the life of the peasantry, he was generally a benevolent landlord, apart from the bit where his peasants tended to 'disappear'. In the meantime, he remained his mayorship of Amsterdam with a legal mechanism that allowed him to send representatives in his stead, either people he'd bribed, or frequently progeny he'd groomed for the purpose.
Much of Albert's history follows that of the country itself, enjoying the successes of the Dutch Republic, and then fighting for survival when consumed by France. In all of these historical twists, Albert jumped from one event to the next by the skin of his teeth, before eventually retiring to his manor in complete societal isolation. He naturally had his progeny around him and ventured out to feed on peasants (in true Dracula style), but otherwise let the world go by.
Unfortunately, his literal fortune was dwindling to nothing, and he was becoming antsy and bored with sheer inactivity. As the 19th century drew to a close, he endeavoured to become a national player once again. Following the fallout of the Napoleonic Wars, the southern low countries (ie: the rest of the modern-day Netherlands and Belgium) were poised to be united as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. Anticipating this direction, he travelled South to Belgium with the intention of snaring a local, in much the same way that he himself was acquired by Phillipe Arizola - to use that local as access to Belgium. Unfortunately, his chosen subject, Jennifer de Sauveterre, was in actuality, French. Still, he did like her as a person, and she was fluent in French, and so served some function. Over the coming years, the two developed a romance of sorts, setting rifts in the Ogthoven household. She was his favourite progeny and she was fiercely defensive of that status.
He continued to flit from event to event, bringing other well-placed humans into his flock as the fortunes of the Netherlands demanded, making sure that he had allies in both the Netherlands' huge trade market and its own industrial revolution throughout the 19th century. Unfortunately, as his small empire grew, he took on more and more progeny and had less and less time for each. His relationship with Jennifer broke down gradually, and then completely, resulting in her leaving him in the first decade of the 20th century to forge her own path - against his wishes. The two would not see one another again for almost a hundred years.
Still, he threw himself into his expansion, continuing the same old games, anticipating events and running with them. His gut instinct was usually about correct, something he now attributes to nothing more than luck, and as vampires chose sides in any given conflict, inevitably, some would be killed or be forced into exile. Through sheer chance, or some kind of sociological natural selection, he became one of the oldest vampires in the Netherlands as the others faded away. His luck ran out when Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940.
The thing with humans on the wrong side of history is that they die and they're posthumously dissected by historians, safe in the grave. Vampires don't get the same excuse, and it was Albert's calculation that Germany would win the Second World War, and he lobbied to, well, help them. This included accepting the holocaust. While vampires were somewhat more pragmatic about the mass deaths of humans, he had still picked the wrong side and he was almost destitute and cast out, with many of his progeny killed not in direct conflict during the war, or indirectly picked off by vampires seeking to undermine his influence. However, when the allies started to tip the balance, he changed tack and supported the resistance against the German occupation, salvaging some of his reputation in the aftermath of the war. In the same manner as before, some vampires older than himself were killed during this period, raising him in the Dutch hierarchy of age, even with his social standing damaged.
It was time to start up again. This time, he eschewed material wealth, and decided to try to take a more leading role in vampire society. When, in the '60s and '70s, the Western vampires were discussing going public, he took, this time choosing the correct side of history to write his name, the attitude that humans and vampires could and should live in harmony, in an increasingly informed world. It was no longer possible to skulk in a mansion until one was hungry. Urbanisation had seen to that. His campaign was one of the most public and influential in Europe, and, though he was well-poised to take a leading position in the new, public vampire society of the '80s, two things waylaid him. Firstly, he had made the decision to sire a vampire, a young, modern Western human to act as a posterchild and mutual insight into the two societies. To see precisely how this went wrong, check out Alexander's sheet. Secondly, and probably more importantly, he realised that perhaps he ought to lay low for a while. His support for vampire liberation was of course unwavering, but more discrete. Fortunately, the Netherlands' relationship with the vampires was fairly balanced by the mid-nineties, and it was then that he used what money he had left to establish the first vampire bar in Amsterdam, in the area that would become the new red light district. By now, he has a small chain of these establishments, but they haven't flourished as much as they might have, as he cannot decide whether to focus on them or on vampire politics. Either way, he is a cornerstone of vampire society, and is a well-respected, if hardly revered, figurehead in the community, using his power and influence to encourage (violently if necessary) vampires to coexist peacefully.