Genevieve Petit de Lyon

Geneviève Petit de Lyon ("Vivi" to her friends, "Gen" to everyone else) was born in the early summer in the small village of La Verpillère outside of Lyon, in Southern France. Her family were farmers, but Geneviève longed for more. An exceptionally bright girl, even at an early age, Vivi's papa often took her on trips to Lyon to purchase books and broaden her horizons. This was often seen as a reward for hard work, and so she developed quite a work ethic, performing her chores early in the morning and afternoon to free up time to read and study at night. Michel and Clotilde were doting parents who thought maybe their precocious child might marry above her station. At 12 years of age, she was sent to Paris to live with Michel's sister Marguerite so she could attend the religious school there, and broaden her education.

It was there in Paris that she fell in with the young revolutionaries of the day, longing to correct the failings of the French Revolution and bring the Noblesse to their knees, or the guillotine. On her 16th birthday, in 1832, Geneviève Petit stood on the walls with her comrades-in-arms to oppose the police and the military as they tried and failed to overthrow the monarchy and usher in a new age of prosperity for the people of the street.

Vivi was gravely injured herself - shot through both the shoulder and thigh. She lay in a makeshift hospital in a small prison in France, when she met Armande de Gaulle, a man who was something of a scientist and a revolutionary in his own right - in the field of medicine. Vivi would come to learn that the man was a Tremere, and from their long talks in the night as de Gaulle treated both her and the other prisoners, the Tremere developed an interest in the young Frenchwoman.

Vivi was adopted as a minor laborer and student at the Chantry in Paris, freed from imprisonment by some means she could not at that time have understood, but which in these nights boils down to money and blood. Vivi excelled at every task, impressing those appointed over her with both her thirst for knowledge and her keen work ethic; but, unfortunately for her, de Gaulle, her sponser - while a upstanding and accomplished Tremere in his own right, was not well-liked by the rest of Paris's Tremere. Like the kine of the day, Armande de Gaulle was more interested in science and understanding the nature of reality than in magic and immortality - commendable traits today, but at the time, among the kindred of the Paris Chantry, de Gaulle was one or two missteps away from becoming a pariah. Despite her talent and determination, Vivi was held back by her connection to the creature that saved her life.

For a few years, she lived as a mortal, working and studying as a mortal, with no inclination of the nature of the organization to which she had attached herself. Then, in 1841 she was initiated into the clan as a Ghoul, technically beholden to de Gaulle, but in service to every Tremere. During the second Italian War of Independence, in 1859, she was moved back to Lyon to serve the Chantry there - a move which Vivi considered a demotion, taking her away from the Clan Elders in France, and the opportunity to advance up the pyramid.

But something else rural farm life had taught Genevieve Petite was patience, and so she served the clan faithfully for nearly a hundred years aware of the outside world and France's place in it, but largely unaffected by any but Tremere, and to a lesser extent, Camarilla matters. In 1944, however, when the Allied Forces liberated France from Nazi occupation, there were many kindred destroyed by the fighting or left for ash by opportunistic rivals. Armand de Gaulle, Vivi's original sponser into the Clan was lost and presumed dead, along with most of the Parisian Chantry, which was burned in the conflict.

The Kindred of Lyon were largely unaffected, but the War had taken a toll on the Tremere in France, and - with their numbers culled - there could be no further opposition to Vivi's embrace, and on August 20th, 1944 in the midst of the Liberation, Genevieve Petit was brought into the Pyramid proper. Though already over a hundred years old, and thinking of herself as an old crone, she still had the appearance of a young woman.

Cedric Delatre, her sire was an accomplished Warlock, and a fan of de Gaulle's science-based studies, though he preferred to combine science with sorcery - seeking to better understand the power of the Blood from a somewhat Naturalistic point of view. Though he was not immune to the distaste his clanmates had for de Gaulle and those who were seen as his "disciples", he was a fair Master, taking Vivi under his wing and instructing her in the areas he felt she might be lacking, given her proclivity for theoretical work over the application of force and will on the world.

Largely, life as a vampire for Vivi was unchanged - though she had a number of new freedoms, not afforded to ghouls and lesser servants, she was given free access to the forbidden libraries, and allowed to interact - though supervised at first - with the other Kindred of Lyon.

Kindred society was in turmoil following the depredations and devestation of the War, and so Vivi's education in her Sire's shadow was one that was performed in public. She was aware of - and in contact with - a number of Kindred in the cities of Lyon and Paris during her instruction, and with no formal introduction to the French Court, but as a formality. By the time she had proven herself capable of working on her own, she had already performed a number of services for a handful of Parisian Primogen and was on a first name basis with the Prince of Lyon's Seneschal.

During the reconstruction period following the War, there were many opportunities for driven Kindred to make inroads into French bureaucracy, politics, and most-important in her Sire's eyes - into institutions of learning. A task laid out by Delatre for his new progeny and to which she excelled. As a child of 19th century France, Vivi recognized the importance of academia in the lives of every person - kindred and kine alike, and helped to develop the Lyon Method, expanding on the work of the Montessori schools and applying them directly to the French life and lifestyle.

For the most part, however, Delatre was displeased with her tendency to ignore vampiric society in favor of her studies. Vivi's Sire was one of the few Tremere to recognize that their place in the Camarilla was a tenuous one; and he believed the best way to hold onto that position of power - and to cushion the blow, should they lose it - was to operate socially, to interact with the surrounding Kindred and develop truly beneficial, and lasting relations with as many of the more powerful among them as possible. He saw Vivi's unwillingness to do so as a weakness; and he took many steps to steer her into more social circles. In many ways, he continued to make demands of his Childe as though she were still under his direction.

As a Vampire, the taint of de Gaulle had worn off, with his apparent destruction during the Liberation and the presence of a "more respectable" Sire, Vivi worked well with the other Tremere; but even as a neonate in the 1950's and '60's, she could see that there was something wrong with the Kindred of France. Stagnant and unwilling to grow and change - to Learn, they lacked the joie de vivre of the Kine on which they fed. Add to that the parasitic nature of the Clan as a whole and by the destruction of the Council at Vienna, Vivi was ready for a change.

At the turn of the Millenium, Vivi was corresponding with Tremere of House Carna - ostensibly to gain insight into an enemies position and capabilities - working at the behest of her superiors; but her dialogs with the Carna touched something within her, and in 2008, when Vienna was broken along with the bonds that tied her so completely to the Clan and the Chantry in Lyon, Genevieve Petit had had enough. She closed her experiments, collected her journals and a handful of useful tomes, and stole away in the night.

Travel can be dangerous for the Kindred, and it took some time, but she made her way to the Americas - and to the Anarch Free States specifically, where she joined a plethora of other women seeking to learn at the feet of Carna and her coven. Now, she has been dispatched to Chicago, to help shore up the position of House Carna in the local Tremere Chantry, and to route the traditionalists if possible.