Rhiannon the Bard

Rhiannon the Bard was a Gangrel in medieval Wales. She is walker on the Road of Sin.

Biography

Rhiannon was a beautiful child. Her mother - a minor noblewoman in the court of Powys - likened her voice to that of an angel. Music was her life and through it she could get her heart's desires - clothes, sweetmeats, pets - a much of the court fell in love with the delicate music of the young girl. It could not, however, bring Rhiannon her deepest desire, to take her place as one of the great Bards of Wales like Aneirin or Taliesin. Despite her skill, her sex blacked her path onward - in a young girl the pursuit of music was charming, but as she grew into womanhood it was an eccentricity to put aside in favor of more appropriate pursuits like marriage and childrearing. She resisted her family's urgings, encouraged in her defiance by an old woman who for as long as Rhiannon recalled had listened to her playing late at night. The crone encouraged her to forsake the life of a wife and chattel to wander the land, experiencing firsthand the stuff from which famous tales emerge. The woman called on Rhiannon to see the world as it truly was, and if she could capture this essence in song, she would reveal great mysteries to the girl.

For long years Rhiannon wandered, cast out by her family and shunned by society. She fought, fornicated and feasted, taking in every experience her young body could survive. As her experiences broadened, she saw the truth in the old woman's words; she could perceive the insecurities and jealousies in men's hearts, their struggles to subsume their desires beneath the morality of Christianity. Rhiannon made no such efforts, living a visceral existence that shocked those around her. Some called her a harlot, others a witch. Her songs changed, no longer the simperings of a girl-child but biting satires from which none escaped. Rhiannon's metamorphosis pleased the old woman, Angharad of the Gangrel, who saw in her feral behavior an ideal "daughter" for the clan.

At first the world of Cainites shocked Rhiannon but soon she came to revel in the new reality that surrounded her, finding in the Cainites and their politics a bottomless well of tales to be told and notables to be brought low. In the centuries since her Embrace, Rhiannon has variously praised and ridiculed most of the Cainite notables in the Isles, though she frequently singles out her distant kinswoman Baroness Seren and Prince Mithras, leading to her being unwelcome in both Gloucester and London. Instead, Rhiannon wanders the Isles, visiting the barons' courts and other sites that pique her interest, all the while seeking new experiences for her undead body.

Reference

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