Isak was born in 1808 in the city of Göteborg, Sweden to a wealthy family. With two elder sisters, Isak was the youngest, the baby of the family, but the favoured child. Always pampered and never knew a life of struggle.

A perceptive, charming, and intelligent young boy, Isak was a proficient learner, taking a quick liking to both academic pursuits and the arts. Graduating in the top of his class, it was unsurprising that his next stop was the country’s biggest and best university in Uppsala- far away from his hometown and his family and friends.

In Uppsala, Isak found it relatively easy to make new friends and connections and in no time was well known among the student body and professors, and local artists as well. Though he was financially well off thanks to his family, he was prone to boredom when not studying or painting, so he took up modelling as a small side job for other artists.

Soft-spoken, blessed with an almost unearthly beauty and the charisma to match, the young blonde was very popular among women and men alike. But it was rare that Isak returned that interest, not that it prevented potential “suitors” from trying to win him over… even if only as a bragging right.

It was through his side job and a few fellow upper class connections he’d made that landed Isak an invitation to an elite extravagant party in the city. A party that would set the course of the rest of his life- meeting Isabel. For once the one who enthralled many found himself drawn to someone and enthralled himself. It seemed like only a blink of an eye before Isak found himself drawn into the whirlwind of her life.

Isak spent years as her ghoul and companion, some good and some not so good, but he was in love.. or so he thought. Meeting a tall, dark-haired handsome Toreador named Kristian one night at his own gallery showing changed everything. So rarely enthralled by the ones interested in him, and yet Isak found himself drawn to that man.. but not as much as that man had become enthralled by him. Toreadors and beauty.

Although their relationship started as nothing more than innocent friendship and a mutual appreciation for the arts, their apparent closeness was enough to stoke the fires of his domitor’s jealous rage and was the spark that began the downward spiral escalation of her abuse of Isak.

He’d been yelled at, hit at times, but as things began to get worse, she denied him her blood until his hunger for it nearly drove him mad.. but other times she would lavish affection him, all to remind him how much she loved him, how lucky he was to have her, how beautiful he was, and how she would give him the world for an eternity.

Isak found it too difficult to build the willpower to try and escape. And yet, when Isabel wasn’t around, he began meeting Kristian in secret more often, craving his attention and acceptance as his only available escape from the torment and sliver of happiness.

What neither of them knew was when Isabel found out about their little “affair”, nor the whispers of rumours that Kristian was intending to seek permission to embrace Isak and steal him away. Whispers that, real or not, she fully believed.

When she suddenly turned excessively affectionate, pampering him, doting on him, and keeping him a well fed and (seemingly) happy ghoul, it didn’t seem too far out of the ordinary as part of her cycle of behaviour. She kept him occupied and kept his attention on her, doing everything in her power to remind him how much she loved him and how much he needed her.

But he simply couldn’t let go of his desire for Kristian’s company… and Isabel wasn’t going to let him have a chance.

So after weeks of pampering (and manipulating) Isak, she finally embraced him. For a moment in time, everything almost seemed like it would be fine, that maybe they could somehow be happy. That maybe the cycle of her cruelty would end. Delusional or simply painfully naive, Isak found out the hard way that things could get so much worse.

One night he woke up to find himself locked in a windowless room he couldn’t escape, a heavy door he couldn’t budge with his meger strength, and barely any recollection of the previous night. Everything she had done to him previously – hurting him, using him, and worst of all starving him – was then threefold. And that was what eventually brought about her own demise.

Starving a vampire close to the point of hunger frenzy is a dangerous game, and one that Isabel eventually miscalculated.

Opening the door that fateful night, Isak pounced on her in a blind desperate rage of frenzy, his Beast fighting for survival and not caring about her attempts to fight him off. And when that frenzy finally calmed and the strange euphoria unlike anything he’d ever felt before passed, all that remained in Isak’s arms was ash.

He doesn’t recall what happened between that moment and when he found himself in the middle of the woods that bordered their haven- confused, lost, and struggling to maintain his control. Growing gaps of time he couldn’t remember passed where it began to seem more and more like Isak had completely succumbed to his Beast, a feral shadow of his former self. No clue where he was, if he’d broken the masquerade, how many days had passed, nothing but the hunger that the Beast demanded he sate.

Maybe it was coincidence, maybe it was luck, or maybe even fate that it was Kristian who stumbled upon that feral remnant of Isak, covered in blood and terrified. His familiar soothing voice and a strong helping of Presence helped assuage Isak until he was calm enough to carefully whisk him out of the city and back to his own haven. Isak had been locked away for so long that Kristian assumed he was dead.

Isak’s rehabilitation was not easy. In one of his short moments of clarity in the following day, he confessed what he’d done, that he’d diablerised his Sire and now feared he’d be destroyed if it was discovered. Whatever Kristian did to cover up her disappearance seemed to work for a time, but whispered rumours that something had happened to her would surface in time, worrying the Toreador.

It took months until Isak seemed to recover, even if not yet completely stable. Terrified of what would happen if his Sin was discovered, Isak reluctantly agreed to stay hidden until Kristian could no longer see the black streaks staining his aura.

Isak suffered through nightmares of his trauma that would continue on for a decade past, as well as a fear of even being touched that was difficult to overcome even with Kristian’s seemingly endless patience with him. Even painting was no longer the comfort it once was, his skills still intact but what was left on the canvas grotesquely distorted.

Isak himself was like a fractured masterpiece of art to Kristian, one he put back together one piece at a time.

Around a year after the incident, they moved and settled in a different town in Sweden, far away from the trauma that city held for Isak now. (Roughly around 1833-1835? Isak’s memory isn’t clear.)

Often confused for a Toreador, the reactions of distrust and mistreatment that he faced when others found out he was actually a Malkavian weighed heavily on him. It seemed like no one wanted to get close to him once they found out, and what help he tried to offer from what he saw in his “dreams” was dismissed or completely ignored, or met with a hostile attitude. His own struggles as a young neonate only further complicated things, but he quickly grew to hate what he was.

So after they moved again, this time to the large city of Copenhagen in Denmark, it was decided Kristian would claim and treat him as his own childe. A new name, a new family, and a chance to start over. But it also meant that Isak had a lot to learn. Kristian had already been training him casually, but now they had to take it more seriously. While Isak did not quite take to Celerity, he seemed to learn Presence with ease. Acting lessons and a good dose of Charisma (and his naturally enchanting appearance) would help him further mask his real identity.

There were still many difficult years spent together. Avoiding the wars, avoiding Isak being discovered for what he truly was, and cleaning up after Isak’s rare fugue-related accidents often meant picking up and moving countries, though they largely stayed within western Europe. Over time Isak learned how to better control his unique struggles,enough so that the pair were able to settle and remain in Copenhagen where Isak was able function fairly well as a part of the Camarilla.

Over the many decades that passed, it became second nature to him. Even if one were to peek at his aura, they would be unlikely to see an indication that Isak was lying when he claimed to be of the Toreador clan, for Isak himself had come to believe it. Even if he remembered what he truly was on some deeper level.

For the most part others seemed to view him as a merely slightly eccentric Rose.

But between the voice of his sire that still haunted him, the strange dreams he had, whispers he heard, and his struggles with emotional stability, it was impossible for Isak to completely forget he was still cursed to always be a Malkavian.

Isak and Kristian’s relationship over the decades flit between times spent loving and almost peaceful, and tumultuous times that ended in the two separating for years at a time.. but they always came back to one another.

At least until Isak sought out Kristian again after more than a few decades of living on his own in Paris after that second World War, working as an art appraiser and translator for a gallery among others. But what he found that time devastated him.

Kristian had finally given up on him and replaced him. Or that was how Isak saw it. A perfect and beautiful Rose with one of the finest voices he’d ever heard. His own childe and something that Isak had found out the hardest way that he could never have.

All the years of his carefully practised control went out the window with what Isak saw as the ultimate betrayal. In a histrionic tearful rage, Isak lost control over himself and lashed out, not physically but mentally. The one discipline he had tried so hard to forget, but his blood would always remember.

Another gap of time and memory.

It felt like a mere blip between when he’d begun getting upset and crying and.. waking up in the corner of the room confused, overwhelmed, and lost. To see Kristian cradling and trying to soothe the broken Rose in his arms, trying to stop the screaming.

Knowing he was the cause for that despairing pain in his once love’s eyes, pain that turned to anger and what he viewed as hate when Kristian looked at him, was forever burned into his memory…

Horrified and heart-broken, Isak fled and went into hiding for many years. Years that he spent full of guilt and shame, paranoid that Kristian would rat him out for what he’d done to his sire, for attacking them, for pretending to be something that he knew he could never actually be. A decade would pass before the paranoia calmed to the point that he felt safe enough to eventually resurface in Paris again in the 1980s to attempt to rebuild his life.

New Orleans hadn’t really been any kind of hidden secret from Isak, after all it was practically Paris’ younger sibling of a city. Much of his work with a Parisian gallery had him making contacts within the city, and though he’d stopped there very briefly a few times before Katrina hit, he hadn’t been back since then. Never long enough to get a real feel for the place to convince him to leave Paris behind. But over the years he began hearing more and more about the place from fellow Kindred either visiting Pairs or having returned from visiting New Orleans themselves.

In the beginning, Isak was put off by what seemed to be a complete lack of structure, something he was used to as part of the Camarilla. He’d always been expected to know his place, where he “belonged” and the rules he had to follow. But as time passed it began to intrigue him. A place where sect didn’t matter, clan didn’t matter, and everyone seemed to be welcome- even opening its doors to Anarchs recently.

There was just something about New Orleans that began to call to Isak. What it was, he couldn’t place, but it grew louder until it was an all too compelling urge that he had to answer. Even his dreams and whispers began to revolve around it, telling him to *go*. Maybe it was the sliver of hope that who and what he was wouldn’t matter there?

It was that fragment of hope that Isak latched onto as he finished up his business in Paris, and with a touch of reluctance left the City of Light behind with only his belongings and a single retainer.

A new home, a fresh start, and a way to try and forget the past that perpetually haunted him.

Short term goal: Learn more about the krewe set-up and join a krewe, figure out business
Mid goal: Make connections, friends, and prove his usefulness to the city. Find acceptance.
Long term/ultimate goal: Let the past go and learn to accept himself, perhaps even stop pretending.. if he’s even able to anymore.

1969 Mustang Fastback in matte black
Identifications
Smartphone (iPhone Pro Max whatever)
A small knife
A necklace memento from his adoptive Sire, a gold chain with a small golden feather pendant.