You'd think ImpSec's dress code would have something to say about that hair
Marcel Deveraux is a Vampire of Clan Lasombra and a member of the Sabbat. He is a Templar in the service of Vanessa, the Cardinal of New Chicago.
Mortal Life[]
Marcel Devereaux was born in Lyons, France, in 1974. After a sex scandal with a male teacher torpedoed his academic career at a performing arts academy, on a drunken dare he enlisted in the French Army. Much to the surprise of himself and anyone who knew him, he actually survived Basic Training and became a competent if unspectactular soldier. He was a Sergent-Chef and assistant platoon leader in a Mechanized Infantry company when Gehenna broke out in 2001.
Embrace[]
During the first weeks of the War of Gehenna, Marcel and his company were sent down into the Catacombs beneath Paris to flush out a nest of Nosferatu Vampires who had been using the basement of the Paris Opera House as their headquarters. Unfortunately, at the same time they were attacking, a Sabbat Pack was also attacking the same target. In the confused three-way fight that ensued, Marcel was mortally wounded. As he lay dying, a similarly-injured Sabbat Sister fed off of him to heal her own injuries. As she regained her strength, she realized she would need new pack members to replace the losses from this botched operation, and so she spat some of her own blood back into the mouth of the dying Deveraux. He awoke starved for blood, badly injured, and freshly turned into that which he had been fighting mere moments before. Driven by instinct, rage, and insensate hunger, he ripped apart several of the bodies lying around him in desperate search for blood to slake his burning thirst, both those of his fallen fellow soldiers and those of dead ghouls. As he emerged blinking from the catacomb tunnel, he was greeted with a shovel to the forehead, knocking him unconscious. He had been subjected to the Shovelhead ritual. He was buried in a shallow grave in a patch of woods near a small French country village. He awoke later, even thirstier than before, and clawed his way up to the surface. He stumbled into town, and into a child's birthday party in a backyard. He slaughtered every guest and family member there, gorging himself on their blood. Realizing afterwards what he had done, his mind fractured, and he fell far down the scale of humanity, even for a Sabbat Shovelhead.
Life in the Sabbat[]
Collected by his siress a few hours later, Marcel was soon sent into battle against his former comrades, and against the many other enemies of the Sabbat, both living and undead. His military training gave him an edge over most of his other fellow recruits, when he remembered enough of his former life to make use of it. Against the odds, he survived the War of Gehenna, and was taken into hiding by his Siress when the Sabbat fled underground at the end of the war. As humanity spread to the stars in the coming decades, the Sabbat quietly went along with them. As new cities were founded on colony worlds, new Vampire societies sprang up in their dark alleys and maintenance tunnels. An underground mining colony on an airless rock of a planet is a perfect habitat for Vampires, what with the total lack of sunlight, the many dark corners and half-completed tunnels to hide in, and the hostile environment of a new-forged frontier to explain any awkward missing persons reports.
The War for Avalon[]
When the Avalon colony really got going, and it became clear that these cities would be bigger even than anything back on Earth, vampires in general quite literally licked their lips in anticipation. The fighting for toeholds in this new territory was fierce, and dozens of elder vampires were killed or diablerized. When the fighting was over, the Sabbat vampires in the new megacity of New Chicago recognized as their Cardinal a Toreador Antitribu named Vanessa. Marcel's siress had died in a Crusader Team attack several years before, and their shared interest in art gave him a foot in the door to become one of the new Cardinal's trusted lieutenants. As her Templar and right-hand man, Marcel now had power and prestige he could only dream about as a mortal.
Season Eight Alternate Timeline[]
When the Vin Shriak attacked Avalon, a large percentage of the human populace was wiped out. The survivors were further decimated by the invasion and conquest of the Federation by the Eastern Bloc to form the Middle Kingdom. Avalon was so devastated by the repeated waves of fighting that the new Capital of the Middle Kingdom was moved to Wilke's Star instead of Avalon or Showa. To make Wilke's Star suitable as a capital world, its troublesome constantly-overcast atmosphere was finally fixed, and it no longer became a Vampire haven. Refugee vampires tried to move in on Avalon, and fierce fighting broke out over territory and influence. In the Byzantine plotting and infighting within the Sabbat, Marcel Deveraux was betrayed by a rival and very nearly killed. Cut off from his former position of power, abandoned by his allies, an angry Marcel Deveraux turned informer and sicced Imperial Security and the Crusader Teams on his enemies. When word of this betrayal of his own kind got out, Marcel was finished in Vampire Society. With no where else left to turn, Marcel once more embraced the new life forced upon him, and became a full-time operative of Imperial Security. Not entirely trusted by his new masters, he was paired up with his half-Asian partner Phil Shon in chasing down the enemies of the Middle Kingdom. He caught, interrogated, and briefly imprisoned James Welthammer, and unsuccessfully investigated the disappearance of Icarus Hicks.
Behind the Scenes[]
His Actor Avatar is Richard O'Brien. Marcel Deveraux has long been a cool name in search of a character. Martin originally came up with the name for a French General in a future-history novel he planned to write with Marcus (but never got around to). Then the name was going to be used for Martin's planned secret policeman/torture technician character from the Exodus project, which also never got off the ground. Finally the name got used for an NPC chasing the characters in Season Eight. Martin's sister also used the name for a Original-character Death Eater in her epic three-volume Harry Potter fanfic "The Third Side: The Autobiography of Severus Snape".