Cover Art by Alison Hunt

This was a character who joined War of Nytefall later than many of the others, but has risen pretty high up the ranks. In the book, Xavier Tempest is a nobleman that would hire Clyde to help him and has now asked him to help with the war.  He is on the vampire council and protects one of the capital cities.  You learn that he’s been working with the survivors of Clyde’s gang too.  Being a noble, he doesn’t get involved in the messy adventures, so he would be seen as a benefactor.  NONE of this existed when I was playing him in another Vampire game.  All he retained was the silver hair and old nobleman clothes . . . Just like in the picture above.

I never had the intention of putting Xavier into Clyde’s stories because I created him as a gaming experiment.  In Vampire: The Masquerade, you have clans to choose from, but you can make a non-clan vampire for a collection of powers.  I never tried it and wanted to do it for once.  My favorite game at the time was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night where you play as Alucard the Son of Dracula.  I went so far as to name the character Alucard Tepes (surname from Vlad the Impaler) and give him powers that mimicked stuff you could do in the game.  He had amnesia too because I needed to take a big flaw to earn enough points for fire powers.  This put his origin in the hands of the guy running the game.  You wouldn’t believe what that was too.

Not that I know because poor Alucard’s storyline went down in flames.  We had captured a vampire that had some info, but another player wouldn’t let me near him.  This guy was a soldier and didn’t get along with Alucard, so we butted heads.  All within character, but it ended with the prisoner being executed before I could ask questions.  The rest of the game had Alucard simply there because he couldn’t find any more clues and it was difficult to rationalize him sticking around when he felt like his allies just betrayed him.  Eventually, the game ended because the players who were the main plots movers left college and I was given an opportunity to join another game as Clyde.

In retrospect, this was for the best because it meant Alucard was a blank slate and I could transform him pretty easily into Xavier.  No more amnesia and I gave him a lot of magic, which made him different from the more physical Clyde.  He’s one of the few vampires in this series who utilizes attack spells like mortal casters.  This might be a spoiler, but I’m thinking of hinting that Xavier is a channeler turned vampire.  Since the series is prior to Nyx’s adventures, nobody will realize this because channelers are still thought to be extinct during this period.  Just another fun twist for this character who I’ll admit I find it difficult to write at times.

One of the issues I have with Xavier is that he operates with more refinement and tact than most of the other characters.  To switch from Clyde to him and back again proved to be a challenge since I played both characters in the past.  It’s almost like talking to myself, but needing to use two different voices.  Doesn’t help that two more of the main cast are my former game creations.  Although, those two are further down the importance scale as you’ll see when I get to them.  Xavier and Clyde are certainly higher profile with more scenes and evolution.  It might take a little more practice to get these two perfect, but I might be too hard on myself.  Mostly, my writing speed when it’s their interactions is rather slow because I have to keep checking to make sure I’m not mixing up their habits and voice patterns.

Keeping up the funny story with characters, I have one that isn’t as much fun as the previous entries.  Alucard was fairly serious and straight-laced to make him different from my more emotive characters like Clyde and Luke Callindor.  Because of this, he tended to fall into the background a lot.  This led to me being allowed to put him aside for one game session and bring Clyde in.  I believe this was an apology for my plot line getting destroyed in the previous session.  Now, this was a fully-powered, day walking Clyde and that caused a small problem.  He was his mouthy and arrogant self, which caused a confrontation with the group werewolf and the soldier.  It was getting heated and then something happened, which resulted in the cops showing up to the vampire haven.  Things were destroyed, cop cars were stolen, and Alucard was brought back immediately with nobody speaking of the incident again.  Guess the game was better off with the bland pre-Xavier character than wild and violent Clyde.

2023 Addition– I feel sorry for Xavier.  He was set up to be the biggest of the baddies in War of Nytefall.  Yet, he was constantly on the fence or overshadowed.  Nadia Sylvan actually had more villainy in her body than her husband, which I didn’t realize until I was outlining Savagery (Book 6).  Xavier was doing well in the first two books.  Then, he was kidnapped alongside Clyde and Titus in Rivalry.  This resulted in Xavier and Clyde turning towards a mutual respect, but still hating each other.  Rules for their shadowy war appeared and it didn’t have the same bite as it used to.  That wasn’t a big problem because much of the series had 3rd party villains appearing to cause trouble.  Jewelz, Leo Kandrel, Desirae Duvall, and Alastyre were the central villains for books 3-6.  That’s half the series where Xavier isn’t the central mastermind and books 2 and 7 didn’t have him in the driver’s seat much too.  What does this mean?  I really don’t know.  He was always supposed to be the polar opposite of Clyde.  He used magic instead of physical force, was a noble instead of a commoner, was colorful instead of wearing black, and restrained in emotions instead of unstable.  Maybe him being rather cowardly or unconfident is another aspect of that.  It sure makes their final battle when they’ve delivered the ultimate emotional blows rather interesting.  Would I change Xavier if I had to write the series again?  Yeah, I would definitely have him be more pro-active or at least make it clear from the start that he’s not sure about the war.  It’s hinted in later books that Nadia is the one pulling the strings, so I’d probably go that route.