Laura was not her mother’s child.  Nor was she really her father’s.  In fact, it was often a joke in the family that, clearly, the real baby Laura had been switched at birth with a changeling child.  For surely, Caterina Sforza and Giacomo Feo could never have produced such an unusual offspring.  Born in the spring of 1493, Laura was the youngest of their daughters.  From the start, she had a certain dreamy quality that put others off.  As a baby, she rarely cried.  For the most part, she only laughed.  She grew up blissfully unaware of the scandal and political intrigue surrounding the rest of her family, including her father’s assassination when she was two.  It wasn’t because she was unobservant.  Laura was a clever girl with a sharp ear.  The problem was that the rest of the family felt the need to shelter her from the turmoil, as they didn’t think her delicate and joyous sensibilities could handle the reality.

At a very young age, Caterina, concerned for the well-being of her children, sent Laura to Florence, to live and study in a convent.  Laura hated the solemn lives of the sisters and would probably have been a holy horror to them, had it not been for Lucinda.  When Laura was ten years old, she awoke one night to discover a glowing, blue light in her room.  The light transformed into a beautiful woman.  She called herself Lucinda and told Laura that she was her fairy godmother.  Given her dreamy disposition, Laura immediately believed.  Throughout the next few years, Laura put up with her dreary life in the convent, meticulously attending to her studies, knowing that, at night, if she was very, very good, Lucinda would reward her.

Lucinda created fantastic illusions for young Laura, to delight and thrill her.  Together, they went on imaginary, magical adventures.  Through this, Laura grew bolder, more assertive.  It seemed she was finally living up to her mother’s reputation.  And when, in 1509, Laura returned home for the wedding of her beloved sister, everyone was quite pleased with the way she’d grown.  Immediately, talk of finding her a suitable husband began.

Unfortunately for Laura, and her two sisters Serafina and Gisella, there were forces at work beyond their mortal experience.  A great family, known as the Giovanni Family, had taken an interest in Caterina Sforza.  The family had existed since ancient times.  They were a family of vampires.  By tradition, each member of the family would be Embraced into one of the five clans (chosen for them based on their aptitudes) after producing several offspring to continue the bloodline.  They were also known to taken in strays.  Led by Livia, the ancient Roman, they intended to marry off Caterina to a man of their choosing, with plans to Embrace their offspring.  Caterina married Giacomo instead.  It was very likely that the Giovanni Family played a role in his assassination.

The family still had an interest in the Sforza bloodline and Laura’s sister Gisella was set to marry one of their plants.  Unfortunately, an up and coming Nosferatu in the family, one Thierry Descoudre da Giovanni had delusions of grandeur and hoped to stage a coup.  In his ambitions, Thierry sought to usurp the right to Embrace the sisters (who had been intended for Daeva parentage), and crashed Gisella's wedding with a number of thugs. Their unwanted presence was quickly revealed, resulting in a massacre that left all in attendance dead, with Serafina, Gisella, and Laura traumatically embraced -- especially traumatically, since Thierry suffered from what Kindred call the "grip of the damned," and all three sisters permanently damaged their vocal cords screaming.

Laura was the last of the three to be Embraced.  She ran through the chaos, shouting for Lucinda to come and save them.  There was no answer from Lucinda.  Caterina, however, found her young daughter.  Laura clung to her mother, but they were pried apart by one of Thierry’s thugs, Laura coming away with her mother’s necklace, which she would keep for the rest of her life.  She tried to escape through a window, but Thierry caught her around the ankle and Embraced her while she screamed.

Afterwards, Thierry escaped with his new protégées only to discover that though his thugs had succeeded in taking out enough prominent local members of the Giovanni Family to have indeed placed him on top of the hierarchy, the sisters themselves were…damaged. He attempted to play the mistake off as intentional, often inviting visitors to look in on the "whispering sisters," all mad and babbling in the cellar of his home (and occasionally used as a sort of "garbage disposal").  However, Thierry would find himself hoisted by his own petard when, in 1515, his precious little trophies broke through their shared madness enough to jump and drain him.

The sisters had just enough awareness of their own situation to recognize that the source of their madness was one another.  They separated and Laura was amazed at how clearly she could think again, once she left Serafina and Gisella’s presence.  But that was a small victory.  Having never been on her own before, Laura felt completely lost.  For a year or so, she lived from night to night, just barely surviving.  But in the fall 1515, Lucinda returned.  Raw and feral, Laura demanded answers from Lucinda.  The overwhelming question, though, was why Lucinda failed to warn her, failed to protect her from all that happened to her.  Lucinda told Laura that it was destiny for her to become a vampire and that it was now her obligation to join the Circle of the Crone and learn Cruac magic.  When Laura scoffed at the idea, Lucinda informed her of her identity.  She was The Crone.  The very founder of the Circle of the Crone and once the most powerful witch to live.  Laura, she declared, was the reincarnation of her daughter and, therefore, her heir. 

Hearing this frightened the very, very Catholic Laura.  So much so that she made the mistake of fleeing to a nearby church.  She rushed to confession, only to encounter a Lancae Bishop, one Pietro di Barone.  He was a secret supporter of the Giovanni Family, as they assisted him with various political machinations.  Therefore, he knew who Laura was and what she meant to them.  After taking her into his “protection,” he immediately turned her over to them.  Rather than kill Laura outright, the Giovanni Family wanted to keep her, to use as a bargaining chip with her sisters.  In order to control the rebellious girl, they decided to marry her to Paolo, a young Daeve recently Embraced into the family.  Though he came from no background of note (indeed, he was a peasant in his mortal life), he’d impressed them with his valiance.  Laura was to be his first test.

Laura was trapped.  She didn’t yet fully understand what she was, but she knew that she wanted to remain independent.  It was Lucinda who taught her about torpor.  She explained that Laura could simply go to sleep.  Although she was afraid to die, she was more afraid to live a life of servitude.  Certainly, her mother would never have tolerated such.  Lucinda promised her that all would be well, that she would one day be rescued by a valiant knight.  So Laura went into torpor.  When her enemies found her, they knew she had to wake up from her tantrum eventually, so they decided to put her into storage.  Storage, in this case, meant a cellar, hidden in the backwoods of Germany.

It would be many years before Laura would wake again.  About six months prior, in the early spring of 1811, two scholarly brothers from a well-off family that had fallen upon hard times, Jacob and Wilheim Grimm, were out in the woods.  For reasons unknown to the brothers, they were attacked by a strange creature (a Gangrel) that drained both of them of blood and fed them vitae, before abandoning them there.  They were given no clues, no explanations for what had happened, nor for what they had become.  Their newfound instincts drove them to drink blood and hide from the sun to survive.  Their old instincts, as scholars, led them to seek an explanation.

They began their search by collecting folklore, trying to piece together the puzzle based on old wives’ tales of monsters and demons lurking the dark.  And through this search, they heard many legends about princes and princesses and faeries as well.  It was after six months of searching that the brothers came upon a cellar.  Sleeping there was a girl with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and delicately pointed ears.  Since the stories all dictated that such a princess could be awakened with a kiss, Jacob tried his hand at it.  There was some blood from his last feeding on his lips and this caused the sleeping Laura to bite him.  He fought back and the two of them ended up mutually blood bound. 

Laura awoke into a new world, one she did not understand.  It didn’t help that she didn’t speak the language.  To the brothers, her behavior seemed wildly erratic and inexplicable, but they felt the need to protect her, Jacob because of the blood bond and Wilheim because he found her absolutely captivating.  Meanwhile, while continuing to try to find a way to communicate with the girl, the brothers turned to all the folklore they’d collected in order to both explain her and explain what they had become.  During this period, they made the mistake of going to an old friend, a professor at the University of Marburg, where they studied as mortals.  The professor was so intrigued by their manuscript of collected folktales that he went behind their backs to publish it in 1812.  He thought he was doing them a favor, considering how impoverished their family had become!

While this was going on, Laura finally managed to find the German Kindred court where, thankfully, someone spoke a language she could understand.  There, the Prince had seen the Grimms’ manuscript and, while fairy godmothers and glass slippers were hardly a Masquerade breach, some of the stories about monsters and demons were a bit too close for comfort.  He sent out his Sheriff and Hound to find the brothers and bring them back alive.  Lucinda returned and warned Laura of this decree and she knew that she needed to protect Jacob.  Jacob was everything she had, even if they could barely communicate.  Lucinda came to the rescue, appearing before Jacob and warning him that they needed to run.  Jacob listened to her, grabbing Wilheim and Laura and fleeing Germany. 

They traveled to Greece.  Jacob and Laura were able to communicate with one another through Lucinda.  Wilheim, however, could neither see nor hear Lucinda and he started to feel a growing resentment over the closeness that Jacob shared with Laura, as poor Wilheim was very much in love with her.  For her own part, Laura came to view Jacob as the father she’d never had.  Although he was much younger than her in years, he was far more experienced and, like a valiant knight, he protected her.  Wilheim, in her mind, was a beloved brother.  She had the family that she’d lost at he Embrace once again and couldn’t be much happier. 

In Greece, Laura changed her name to Petra Aspros, in the hopes of avoiding the attention of the Giovanni Family.  Unfortunately, the Greek battle against the Ottoman Empire, beginning in 1814, left the entirety of Europe watching Greece.  The Kindred court was in a state of uncertainty itself.  The Lancae Sanctum ruled in the form of Prince Bishop Alexandros Ypsilantis who was determined to aid the mortal army in driving out the Turks.  This meant that any who came to the city, claiming to be there to help in the battle on behalf of Christian civilization was immediately accepted without questioning.  While this meant that Petra, Jacob, and Wilheim (all going by the name Aspros) weren’t questioned about the circumstances of their arrival, it also meant that a Kindred named Armand Charmant was able to enter the city with no problems.  He was a member of the Giovanni Family.  And had been following Petra and the brothers for some time.

For a good long while, life was quiet, despite the ongoing wars.  Petra and Jacob busied themselves exploring Greece and continuing Jacob’s work of collecting folklore, in order to better understand what it meant to be Kindred.  Lucinda supplemented their work with stories from the Crone’s point of view, urging both of them to join the Circle again and again.  Meanwhile, Wilheim continued to pine for Petra.  He felt that nothing he could do would win her attention.  It was only natural that he would seek the advice of the handsome Frenchman, Armand, for advice in wooing women.  Armand was more than eager to counsel Wilheim, as it let him keep an eye on Petra’s activity and report back to the Giovanni Family. 

The Giovanni Family made arrangements to come collect Petra, once again hoping to use her as a bargaining chip with her sisters.  Armand was the final part of the plan when, one night, he urged Wilheim to lead her to an especially romantic grove, just outside of Athens.  Wilheim did as he was bid and Petra, having no reason not to trust her dear brother, went with him.  They walked right into the trap.  At first, Wilheim fought to defend her, but when Armand offered to let Wilheim have her for a wife, if he joined the ranks of the Giovanni Family, Wilheim agreed.  Petra was tied up and would have been taken, except for the fact that Jacob was led to the scene by Lucinda.  He managed to free her, but the two of them couldn’t get far.  For a few nights, they hid in ruins and caves, but they could hear the Giovanni Family hunting them.  And Wilheim was with them.

Lucinda tempted Petra with an escape, offering to teach her Cruac magic in order to fight back against their enemies.  Petra still had no desire to go from fairy tale princess to witch, however.  Things came to a head close to dawn one evening, when Wilheim, at last, found Jacob and Petra.  Although they tried to talk sense into him, Wilheim refused to listen.  The Giovanni Family had promised to make him a Prince.  And only a Prince could win the hand of the fair maiden in the stories.  Jacob pointed out that they were only silly stories, but Wilheim was beyond reasoning.  Petra still loved Wilheim, even if it wasn’t the way he wanted her to love him, so she could only see one way out of the situation.  She consented to learn a Cruac ritual from Lucinda.  Lucinda taught her the Pangs of Proserpina.  Petra used it on Wilheim and, driven mad with hunger, he abandoned his prisoners before he could turn them over to the Giovanni Family.  Reluctantly, Jacob and Petra fled Greece.  The year was 1833. 

The two of them traveled south to Tripoli.  It was as wracked with civil strife as Greece had been making their entry into Kindred society relatively quiet since, once again, the Lancae Sanctum were far more concerned with battling the Ottoman Empire than with investigating two new arrivals.  Lucinda was pleased with their choice, however, as it brought them to the doorstep of her great protégé, a Hierophant named Leslie Redfern.  Leslie was a Ventrue of Scottish origins, although she’d spent much of her unlife in the Holy Land, and was a devout Jew.  She was immediately happy to take both Petra and Jacob under her wing, teaching them all about the Circle of the Crone and Cruac.  Leslie, as it turned out, was in Florence around the time of Petra’s Embrace.  She’d heard the legends of the Whispering Sisters and had grown disgusted by the machinations of the Giovanni Family.  This immediately led her to feel very protective of Petra.  In time, she fell in love with Jacob.  The two of them married, much to Petra’s delight, and for a while, Petra again had a loving family to call her own.

It wasn’t until 1911 that everything went wrong…as so often happens in Kindred society.  Italy decided to annex Tripoli.  With all the political upheaval, it was no surprise that a flood of new vampires entered the city to do battle in the political arena.  And among them was Armand Charmant.  He had it in mind to destroy Leslie Redfern, even before he found out that she was harboring Petra and Jacob.  She had political influence in the city and the Giovanni Family wanted it.  He bided his time, slowly gathering up information about her until, at last, he learned the location of her haven.  With a boot squad from the family, he led an attack one night.  It should have gone easily, but he hadn’t anticipated that Leslie would have company.  Jacob and Petra fought to protect her.  In the end, though, it was Leslie who protected them.  She fought back against the family and Dominated both Petra and Jacob to run.  As they fled, they saw Leslie destroyed. 

Disheartened, Petra and Jacob decided to cross to America to start over.  They should have known better.  When they arrived in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1912, they went to seek acknowledgment from the Prince.  The Prince was Wilheim.  He’d been set up by the Giovanni Family and was their puppet.  Through him, and other puppet princes along the eastern seaboard, they ruled a great deal of New England with plans to expand.  In fact, they were laying the foundation to eventually take over the Kindred political structure of the entire country.  And they had a cellar of staked enemies already dealt with and out of their way.

Half-mad and utterly vindictive, Wilheim ordered Jacob put to death.  Petra offered to be his consort, if he would spare Jacob.  Wilheim accepted, merely having his brother staked and added to the collection of enemies in the basement.  As for Petra, the deranged Wilheim had her dressed like a fairy tale princess and kept locked away in a tower of his mansion, save for special occasions when she would accompany him, quite literally nothing more than an ornament, a trophy wife.  Though it was a miserable existence, Petra saw much of the activities of the Giovanni Family and gradually learned the names of all the puppet princes in place and the names of dozens more to be placed. 

At one formal ball, during the summer of 1938, hosted by Wilheim himself, Petra was surprised to run into Paolo.  Paolo was one of the future puppet princes, but he confessed to Petra that he was none too happy about it.  He’d become disenchanted with the Giovanni Family long ago when, after Petra first went into her torpor, they insisted on carrying out his marriage to her, even though she wasn’t awake for it.  What really disgusted him the most, however, was their insistence that he consummate the marriage, something he assured Petra he’d lied about.

That night, the New England Hurricane hit the city.  In the confusion, Petra decided now was her chance to try to rescue Jacob.  She raced down to the cellar, Paolo following after her, but the man they managed to unstake was not Jacob.  He was a political prisoner named Ashley Corbel.  Paolo offered to help him escape.  Ashley was grateful and wanted to know how he might contact Petra again.  She told him to change his name to Redfern and that, in time, they might meet once more. 

Thrilled by their little act of rebellion, Petra and Paolo began to reunite, every time there was a party or meeting held by the Giovanni Family.  They would always find a pretense to search for staked political prisoners and free them.  Each prisoner was given the same instructions; to change their name to Redfern and to seek out others.  This went on for many, many years.  Paolo, as Petra’s contact to the outside world, told her of a growing number of Redferns, banding together to combat the machinations of the Giovanni Family.  All this gave her hope, and her relationship with Paolo turned into something she could almost call love.  She wasn’t really sure, as she’d never felt it before.  And given how infrequently they met, Petra didn’t put too much thought into the matter.

Their real chance to strike against the Giovanni Family came when Wilheim hosted another gathering in the winter of 1980.  It was in the midst of Providence’s “Renaissance” and Wilheim was eager to show off how wonderful his city had become, even though most of the Kindred citizens were fairly miserable under his reign, jokingly referring to him as “Prince Charmless.” 

This was Petra’s opportunity to free Jacob and she knew it.  And when she and Paolo snuck down to the cellar, this was precisely what she did.  Lucinda guided her straight to where Jacob was being kept and she unstaked him.  Unfortunately, as she was tending to Jacob, zealous fervor got the better of Paolo.  He began unstaking all of the political prisoners.  Some of them immediately went into frenzy.  Others wanted nothing but revenge.  Chaos broke out, resulting in a massive fight before the house was lit on fire.  Petra, Jacob, Paolo, and a handful of more level-headed prisoners made a break for the door.  Wilheim saw them, crying out angry curses after them, but they managed to escape.

The whole lot of them changed their names to Redfern, seeking out the others in their newfound family.  Most of them eventually went their separate ways, either to resolve unfinished business or to continue the fight in their own ways.  Petra and Jacob remained together, as steadfastly loyal as ever.  Jacob, however, was tired, and still nursing a broken heart.  Hoping to reconnect with the memory of Leslie, the two of them settled down in Augusta, Maine in 1984.  The city was outside of the Giovanni Family’s influence.  Quiet and remote, it allowed Jacob, under the guidance of Lucinda, to study Kabbalah.  He had a lovely singing voice and was eventually ordained as a cantor.  Petra, meanwhile, remained in touch with her husband, now Paolo Redfern, keeping track of the doings of the Redfern Family. 

Their rebellion was quiet, focusing in on one city at a time, instead of anything widespread.  They overthrew five puppet princes in New England over the course of the next two decades, among them, Wilheim.  Although the Giovanni Family tried not to take the attacks seriously, by the sixth prince, they were eager to talk.  Paolo turned to Petra for advice.  She, in turn, asked Lucinda what to do.  Lucinda suggested a parlay on neutral ground, perhaps, Chicago.  Not knowing anything about the political landscape outside of New England, Petra passed along the idea to Paolo.

After years of negotiations, it looked like plans were underway for a sit-down.  In 2011, Jacob came to Petra.  He said he wanted to find Wilheim.  Considering how much family had been lost between the two of them, he felt that he owed it to his brother to try to save him from the Giovanni Family.  Petra, who’d grown to hate Wilheim after the way he treated her, was reluctant to agree, but she didn’t want to be separated from Jacob and she knew that the word “family” would always be her ultimate weakness.  Lucinda, however, grew annoyed.  She was tired of all of the time Jacob and Petra had wasted on silly Kindred politics when they were supposed to be focusing on Cruac and the Circle of the Crone.  Petra had a destiny to fulfill as her heir, after all.  But Petra was tired of listening to Lucinda’s criticism and tired of being “destined” for things.  Jacob, for his own part, was still raw over Leslie’s death and, in part, blamed Lucinda for not warning them.  It was the recipe for the ultimate explosion of tempers.  The screaming match turned into Jacob and Petra walking away from Lucinda. 

They traveled back to Providence, a city that was thriving now, under the leadership of a new prince.  Because they carried the name of Redfern, Petra and Jacob were treated like conquering heroes and were afforded high status as guests of the Prince herself, one Lily Redfern, a former political prisoner of Wilheim and the Giovanni Family.  She had taken up residence in Wilheim’s old mansion.  Naturally, wanting the punishment to fit the crime, she had locked Wilheim away in the same cellar where he’d kept all of his political prisoners.  The difference was that she kept him awake, force-feeding him enough blood to keep him conscious, but not enough for him to do anything without risking a frenzy.  This was the state that Jacob and Petra found Wilheim in, when they ventured downstairs after a few weeks.

Wilheim was not pleased to see them.  In fact, he immediately started yelling at them, demanding that they leave him at once.  At first, Petra and Jacob thought he was simply beyond reasoning due to hunger and derangement.  But then the mansion exploded.  Literally.  Because they were in the basement, they were shielded from the worst of the blast, but it was still enough to deal them all a significant amount of damage.  Wilheim screamed at Petra and Jacob to run before they were found.  It was a jailbreak.  He’d known about it for weeks.  The Giovanni Family was coming for him.

Jacob and Petra ran.  And ran.  And ran.  And they didn’t stop running.  Not for a year.  Not until they reached Chicago, where they hoped to find other Redferns and the protection they desperately needed.  Upon learning of the split north/south government in the city, Petra elected to go north, Jacob going south.  They would continue to share a haven (using his connections as a cantor, Jacob set them up in a local synagogue), and between the two of them, they hoped to find family.  Petra had no idea what she was in for…