The Main Vampire Families

Any characters who are not specified to be a member of a family will be listed below
under miscellaneous.

Akasha's Brood
• Akasha
• Enkil
• Khayman
• Mekare
• Maharet
• Jesse

Family Tree
Amel -----------Akasha
|
-----------------
| |
Enkil Khayman
/ \
Maharet Mekare
|
Jesse

Marius' Brood
• God of the Grove
• Marius
• Mael
• Armand
• Daniel
• Pandora

Family Tree
God of the Grove
|
-------------
| |
Marius Mael
|
-----------
| |
Pandora Armand
|
Daniel
Lestat's Brood
• Magnus
• Lestat
• Gabrielle
• Louis
• Nicki
• Claudia
• Madeline
• David Talbot

Family Tree
Unnamed Parisian
Child of Darkness
|
Magnus
|
Lestat
|
----------------------------------------------
| | | | |
Louis Claudia Nicki Gabrielle David
|
Madeline

Misc Vampires
• Santino
• Baby Jenks
• Azim

The Queen of the Damned

Akasha's creation as the first vampire occured circa 4011 BC before the first civilizations.
She was worshipped by her progeny through the ages more as a myth than a leader and
was described by many names. In the most common legends She and Enkil, her spouse,
are referred to as "Those Who Must be Kept."

In her mortal life Akasha originated from the city of Uruk in the Tigris and Uphrates
Valley. She went to Kemet to become the bride of Enkil and Queen of the region,
bringing new ideas and beliefs to the area. One of these was the banning of the custom of
eating the flesh of a deceased parent, the crime for which Maharet and Mekare were
taken prisoner.
She became a vampire having had her skin pierced by Amel and his entering her body.
She went on to make vampires of her husband, her right hand man, Khayman, and many
others of whom we hear no more, in order to aleviate the insatiable blood thirst she had
acquired.

The Queen and Enkil were protected by many keepers through the centuries, among them
Marius. Their bodies became completely hardened with time and they no longer needed
to feed. They went into seeming trances for centuries on end. The Queen used to
experience "life" in this time by occupying the minds of lesser vampires, such as Baby
Jenks.

Akasha was woken again by Lestat and his music in the twentieth century, and took him
as her new lover, destroying her husband.

She was destroyed herself by the Twins having wiped out the majority of the vampire
population with fire.

Enkil
Husband to Akasha was devoted to her and adored her. He imposed her will upon the
Kingdom when she came to reign by his side in Kemet.

When she was awakened by Lestat he rose in an attempt to kill him, but was later
destroyed by the Queen to whom he meant nothing.

Khayman
Khayman was steward to King Enkil and Queen Akasha. He was the first experimental
creation by the Queen in an attempt to lessen the bloodthirst, which took over her on
becoming a vampire. He passed the Dark Trick on to the twins, Mekare and Maharet, that
they might seek revenge on the King and Queen more than 6000 years later.

While the twins were imprisoned, he was forced to rape them on behalf of Enkil, who
would not dishonour his wife by carrying out the punishment himself. As a result of this
he fathered Miriam, the first and last mortal child of Maharet. In time this mortal lineage
would produce Jesse.

Mekare the Twin

Mekare, twin to Maharet, went underground, literally, awaiting the time for her revenge
upon Akasha for having spread the curse of Vampirism.

At the Kings request her tongue was also cut from her head and she remained dumb
evermore.

The King and Queen believed the twins to be evil for their gift of communicating with
spirits.

Following the demise of Akasha, Mekare becomes the new Queen of the Damned upon
consuming the heart and brain of the old Queen. The tribe from which the twins
originated having the belief that a deceased person lives on through being eaten and so
preserved by close friends and family members.

Maharet the Twin

Maharet, twin to Mekare, was guardian of the mortal descendents of her sister. Living in
a house built into the side of the Sonoma mountains, California, she kept a map and
histories of all family members and was known to them all as a distant spinster aunt
looking for a family to dote on.

She became mortal mother to Miriam, whose lineage produced Jesse, following a
punishment rape by Khayman on the King, Enkil’s, behalf.

As a further punishment by the King and Queen she had her eyes torn out and replaced
them with mortal ones

Jesse
Jesse is a mortal descendant of the Twins, Maharet and Mekare.

Orphaned soon after birth she became aware of her family through the constant contact of
Maharet with all descendants of her sister Mekare.

Blessed, or indeed cursed, with the ability to see and communicate with spirits, Jesse
became a subject for observation by the Talamasca, and subsequently became a valued
member of their society.

Her birth as a vampire arose following a near fatal attack by a Child of Darkness at
Lestat's concert. Prior to this Maharet was strongly against Jesse becoming too involved
with vampires or the Talamasca for fear of Jesse's own safety.
The God of the Grove
Little is said about the God of the Grove.

His followers imprisoned him inside the hollowed trunk of a tree, and held sacrificial
services regularly where they would feed him with humans they had taken captive. He
was, naturally enough, a vampire, but was burnt badly during the time that their
inquisitive keeper exposed Those Who Must be kept, Akasha and Enkil, to the sun.

As a result of his weakened state, his followers decided that they needed a ``new'' God,
and to these ends ``elected''Marius, a stranger traveling through the land, to be their new
leader. He was brought to the sacrificial ceremony and the God of the Grove transformed
him into a vampire.

Now, no longer needed, the God was destroyed by his followers, but not before he
warned Marius that he must escape. And here endeth the brief appearance of the God of
the Grove.

Marius the Keeper

Marius is the Keeper of "Those Who Must be Kept", Akasha and Enkil.

His story is told in full by himself in "The Vampire Lestat", reference: VII Ancient
Magic, Ancient Mysteries" pp 399 - 538, and "Marius's Story" from p 431.

Born to imortality "in the years of Augustus Caesar", at the turning point of eras, he says
that he has the capability to look at things from a new angle, as is Lestat. he believes that
this is why he has survived so long, where vampire law decrees he should have gone mad
and killed himself, or been killed out of mercy.

Marius is of Celtic descent, with blue eyes and fair hair. He is tall and "more finely made
than other men". He was lover to Pandora and later master to Armand.

He was made a vampire to replace the God of the Grove following the exposure of Those
Who Must be Kept to the sun by their then keeper, who just wanted to see what would
happen. What happened was that all vampires, having originated from Akasha, were
burned equally, but they being weaker than she were maimed more severely.

On escaping the Grove after the ritualistic festival conducted in his honour, Marius went
to Egypt to fing the King and Queen and became their new protector. A position he did
not look back on until the Queen began to "live" again.
Armand
Armand was no more than a boy when he was made by Marius. He had been the mortal
companion of Marius for many years before he was finally made, but finally, the pair
were attacked and the deed could be put off no longer.

Believing Marius to be dead, Armand fled to Paris where he became leader of his own
coven, though none of the group were his children, having sworn that he would never use
the Dark Trick.

In Paris, he encountered the newly born Lestat, whom he immediately fell into a
love/hate relationship with.

Later he moved to the Theatre des Vampires, having been encouraged to abandon the
crypts and to make the most of his imortality, by Lestat.

Daniel -- the interviewer

Daniel was the interviewer of "Interview With the Vampire" fame.

Following his introduction to the world of the vampires courtesy of Louis, he became a
friend of Armand’s, later being made a vampire by him when his human life was in
danger due to ill health brought on by alcoholism and living rough in an attempt to escape
Armand and the hold he had over Daniel.

He is reckless and cheerful, and is constantly enthralled and amused by what he has
become. His experiences drove him half crazy before he finally allowed himself to be
transformed, and he carries this insanity with him into the World of Darkness.

His character is wonderfully innocent. He feels no fear, or paranoia, and has no guilt
about the need to kill. After a miserable mortality he is experiencing all that immortality
has to offer him and enjoying it to the best of his ability.

Pandora
Pandora was the mortal lover of Marius, keeper of Akasha and Enkil. She believed
herself to be the reincarnation of a vampire who had been destroyed by fire, but whose
ashes had not been properly scattered. She cajoled Marius into allowing her to drink from
Those Who Must be Kept to allow her to be fully reincarnated as a vampire.

She and Marius lived together in Antioch for 200 years together, before finally Pandora
left him.

As with the oldest and most powerful vampires, Pandora has the power of flight.
Mad Magnus
Magnus stole the Dark Trick from a Parisian Vampire. He was an outcast, having not
been properly made, in accordance with the Laws of the Vampires. He spent his lifetime
trying to find a blonde beautiful male to pass the trick on to before committing suicide by
leaping into a bonfire and commanding his child to scatter his ashes.

Lestat was the mortal he finally chose to make immortal. In his tower Lestat saw the
corpses of many similar looking young men, who had been killed and left to rot by
Magnus, having decided that they weren't suitable for his needs afterall.

Lestat de Lioncourt
Lestat was Born to Darkness courtesy of Magnus.

He is the father of Claudia, Gabrielle, Nicki and Louise.

A self-acknowledged imp, he was responsible for the dissolution of the Paris coven, with
which he clashed in his first year as a vampire, thereby earning both the hatred and love
of the coven leader, Armand.

He was also partly to blame for the awakening of Akasha ,in the late 1980s, when he
decided to become a rock star and chose as the subject of several of his songs the legend
of Those Who Must be Kept.

He is the main character in all of the chronicles, and narrator of two and most of another.
It's speculated that, in physical appearance at least, he's modeled on Stan Rice, Anne's
poet husband.

Gabrielle -- Mortal Mother of Lestat

Gabrielle was unhappy as a mortal. She felt stifled in the role of wife and mother and
wished for an independence that women of her time were not afforded. For this reason
she doted on Lestat, her impetuous, angry son, and did all she could to help him achieve
his goals. To an extent she experienced life through him.

Falling seriously ill, her final act is to give him her jewels to be used as his fare to Paris,
on the condition that he write to her regularly to tell her of life in the city.

Lestat admires his mother's strength and loves her dearly, which is what makes it so
difficult for him when he hears that she is finally dying.
His repayment for all his mother did for him is finally to give her eternity to live as she
never had a chance to while mortal. Gabrielle as an imortal is urgent and excited. She is
determined not to waste a moment of her time and is always busy. Nothing is beyond her
simply because she won't let anything be beyond her. She is surely the strongest character
in the Chronicles.

Louis Pointe du Lac

Louis was a Plantation owner in Louisianna. He describes himself as being a 25 year old
man when Lestat made him a vampire in 1791. His mortal family consisted of a dead
father, a younger brother, Paul, and a mother and sister, of whom we hear little. Louis'
claim to fame is that he remains the most "human" of all the vampires throughout. He is
the father of Claudia, though not by choice, and also, later, of Madeline, Claudia's doting
companion. Louis, for the most part, turns his back on his gifts, choosing to continue his
life in as mortal a fashion as he can. He despises the taking of life and is furious when he
finds out only after he has been made to take human blood that he could as easily have
fed from animals.

David Talbot
David Talbot, Superior General of the Talamasca, first appeared in Queen of the Damned,
when he attended Lestat's concert in San Francisco. Later on, Lestat started to visit him,
tempting him with immortality, which he steadfastly refused.

He played a major role in Tale of the Body Thief. In the course of the book, while helping
Lestat to recover his vampire body from Raglan James, his spirit was inadvertantly
transferred from his own seventy year-old frame into the body of a young man. In this
form, Lestat gave him the Dark Blood against his will.

THE TALAMASCA

Investigators of the Paranormal

We watch

And are always here.

London Amsterdam Rome

The Talamasca, meaning "Animal Mask" from the Latin, are a secret society, set up, as
their calling card says, to watch the paranormal in action. The name Talamasca was also
an old term to describe a witch or a shaman. Their basements are filled with records of
phenomena such as Witches, Spirits, and Werewolves and of course Vampires.
Welcoming people with paranormal powers to visit them, occasionally they become
aware of individuals with particularly strong powers, these people are investigated and
offered a place with their group, but are not obliged to accept the position, though almost
invariably they will.

The Talamasca demand complete obedience, loyalty and devotion from their members.

Relevant Talamasca Members

• Jesse
• Aaron Lightner
• Raglan James
• David Talbot

The Laws of the Vampires

as revealed to Armand by Santino
ONE

That each coven must have its leader and only he might order the working of the Dark
trick upon a mortal, seeing that the methods and the rituals were properly observed.

TWO

That the Dark Gifts must never be given to the crippled, the maimed, or to children, or to
those who cannot, even with the Dark Powers survive on their own. Be it further
understood that all mortals who would receive the Dark Gifts should be beautiful in
person so that the insult to God might be greater when the trick is done.

THREE

That never should an old vampire work this magic lest the blood of the fledgling be too
strong. For all our gifts increase naturally with age and the old ones have too much
strength to pass on. Injury, burning -- these catastrophes, if they do not destroy the Child
of Satan will only increase his powers when he is healed. Yet Satan guards the flock from
the powers of old ones, for almost all, without exception go mad.

In this particular, let Armand observe that there was no vampire then living who was
more than 300 years old. No one alive then could remember the first Roman coven. The
devil frequently calls his vampires home.
But let Armand understand here also that the effect of the Dark Trick is unpredictable,
even when passed on by the very young vampire and with all due care. For reasons no
one knows, some mortals when Born to Darkness become as powerful as Titans, others
may be no more than corpses that move. That is why mortals must be chosen with skill.
Those with great passion and indominatable will should be avoided as well as those who
have none.

FOUR

That no vampire may ever destroy another vampire, except that the coven master has the
power of life and death over all of his flock. And it is further his obligation to lead the old
ones and the mad ones into the fire when they can no longer serve Satan as they should. It
is his obligation to destroy all vampires who are not properly made. It is his obligation to
destroy all those who are so badly wounded that they cannot survive on their own. And it
is his obligation finally to seek the destruction of all outcasts and all those who have
broken these laws.

FIVE

That no vampire shall ever reveal his true nature to a mortal and let the mortal live. No
vampire must ever reveal the history of the vampires to a mortal and let the mortal live.
No vampire must commit to writing the history of the vampires or any true knowledge of
vampires lest such a history be found by mortals and believed. And a vampire's name
must never be known to mortals, save from his tombstone, and never must any vampire
reveal to mortals the location of his or any other vampire's lair.

The mortal characters of the chronicles

• Paul de Pointe du Lac (Louis' brother)
• Louis' sister
• Babette Freniere
• Aaron Lightner
• David Talbot
• Raglan James
• Gretchen