Sharon,
Here is some of the information I promised to you.
Marius- Marius, at the age of forty was already a well eduacated scholar and had lived his mortal lifetime in the company of books rather than other men. He is the son of a Keltic woman and a very wealthy Roman citizen. He is, as you may know, a bastard child.
Marius lived his first lifetime in the Roman Empire, somewhere near the year 50 B.C, though he never stayed in one area too long before leaving. Educated in five languages, he was often asked to translate, and perform other scholarly duties. It is this education that brought upon him the, then mortal, Mael.
They met in a tavern, in the Roman Gaullic city of Massila, while Marius was writing, as he often did, in one of the numerous textbooks he had aquired. He has hundreds of these little books. The number used to be much greater but many of them were destroyed in the Grand Canal villa in Venice, in the attack. You do know what attack I am reffering to.
Because he was so well traveled, Blonde, with blue eyes,(The very marking of the Keltoi) and strong built,Marius was the choice for the sacrifice of the God in The Grove. However, it was not only his physical nature that made him the obvious choice.
Marius could go down into Egypt, He could read and write.
After he had been gived the blood, repeatedly by the God In The Grove, Marius escaped The Feast of Samhain ritual ceremony and traveled to many, many cities of the Roman Empire. In these cities, Pergamon, Athens, he searched for others of his kind, other vampires that could help him understand the enormousity of The Gift. It wasen't until he reached Alexandria that he searched out the Elders, a group of very old ones who had been partailly destroyed.
I do not remember if I explained the reason these immortals were nothing more than blackend things, things with no flesh, but rather seemed to be made of thick ashes and gleaming slits that were eyes.
I will tell you now.
Marahet had found Akasha, in the shrine of those who must be kept. She had pierced the heart of the Queen and stirred a force that had been dormant for many ages. This occured BEFORE the renevants took the Goddess into the sun, Before Marius had even been turned. So as these renevants, disciples of Khayman, took her into the sun, she was already coherent, not having "lapsed back" as Marius would say. She was the one who destroyed these Elders. And it is my beliefs that she did this to show her power, to make it know that she, Akasha, could not be defeated. It was a lesson, this pyre of the old ones, that she not be disturbed again.
Of course then she found Marius, and the rest you know.
While Marius tended to Those Who Must Be Kept, years later in the fifteenth century, he spent those days away from the shrine, in Venice Italy, taking up the passion of art he'd derived from those days in Alexandria, the images that he had seen in the libraires of the Egyptian city were kept close to his thoughts, and it was inevitable really, that he should pick up a paintbrush one day, and begin to recreate these images the way he would like to see them.
You see cherie, every immortal feels the need to create others, and Marius, dedicated to his oen cause, would not surcumb to this desire. The way he created was through his paintings, through the art that ruled his existence for the next century.
This passion for artistry eventually led to his desicion to adopt others, young children who captured his affection. And this is how, and why, The Vampire Armand came to be.
He found Armand, then Armadeo, in a monastary near the Grand Canal. only a few miles from his villa there, and apprenticed the boy, not based on the child's talent, or skill, but on his physical appearance, the details can be found in the books.
What was done to Armand in that brothel is unknownst to me, though I know his suffering was deep. But that is another story, one that will be documented soon,
Armand was "created" in 1483, by Marius.
The attack that is scrawled, rather boyishly across the pages of my autobiography took place in 1590, over a century later. Led by Santino, a very old, but not powerful vampire from Italy, (Documentation of him still to come) and his/the Roman Coven.
Marius was thought to have died by the pyre, but in reality fell into the canal, extinguishing the flames that tore at his garments, and fled to the Shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept, badly burned. He remained there for centuries, having drunk the blood of Akasha, never Enkil, to heal.
It is here that he met Pandora.
But the rest of this must wait. I hope this has helped your cause, or at least provided you with intersting reading. There is more, and it will come.
I look forward to your reply Madmosielle,
Lestat de Lioncourt
April 1995.