Editing Agamemnon

Once the commander of the greek fleet in the mother of all wars, Agamemnon found the end for his mortal days as his wife, Clytemnestra, stabbed him to death upon his return to Argos. Such was the tale told to his subjects, made notorious by several tragedies from later days as the narrative sunk into a surreal, mythical background.

In fact, though, the king of Argos returned from the war a changed man. Years of conflict took their toll on him, some would say, as he became increasingly mad. Right after the attack on Apollo’s temple and the argument with Achilles, the king was visited in dreams by Morpheus, the black messenger of the gods. Word is that his bloodlust was unmatchable after that solemn visit. The kings’ days would be spent in the battlefield, clad in armor, a cruel and unrecognizable visage carved behind the crevices of his helm. In times of rest, he’d only leave his tent at night, always closely followed by Briseis, the lover that would keep the king from his duties as the sun crossed the skies. 

Years passed as war raged all around, the transformation undergone by Agamemnon becoming more and more pronounced. Ulysses was the first to notice, and also the first to uncover the truth behind the kings’ strange metamorphosis. It was under his counsel that Agamemnon found ways to dismiss his men’s suspicions by impregnating Briseis with Aleso. The child was fabled to survive Clytemnestra’s betrayal of Agamemnon, living an honored life and dying to protect an ally from a mortal wound. His existence is chronicled amongst the undead as the potential testimony of the presence of half-vampires among men, even though nothing confirms this theory. This story is commonly associated with the Tragedy of the Lovers, readily placed as the middle segment of the mythologeme of undead offspring (the last part being the fabled birth of the thin blood’s child, one of the signs of Gehenna).

As the story goes, Agamemnon would have risen prayers to the gods, searching for an answer. Supposedly, an ancestor god granted him, through the hands of a familial priestess, the means to impregnate Briseis, thus conceiving the boy. The most faithful consider that the priestess employed potent rituals to make him fertile, while others suggest that a slave was used to deliver the seed in place of the king.

Even though tradition states that Agamemnon was transfixed by a sword, truth is that Clytemnestra recognized the curse bestowed upon her husband. Diviners from Argos had warned her about the twisted existence the king had been leading. After that, the queen sought the means to destroy her husband by offering a reward to anyone that could fashion a weapon strong enough to subdue him. The answer came from an ionic artificer. Commissioned by the queen, the mysterious man built a blade of bones and treated wood, sure to resist the passage of time and to reach the kings’ heart, as advised by her counselors. Upon his return, as night descended upon the city and the king crossed the streets in apotheosis towards the palace, the queen prepared the fatal blow. Not even the terrified warnings of his lover could stop what was set in motion by the betraying queen and the cursed Aegisthus, her newfound accomplice and lover. As the king arrived, his clothes were taken by the servants and he entered his bath, prepared to purify himself to the festivities that were to follow. Alas, as his senses rested and his body finally surrendered to the comforts of home, his queen joined him, only to lodge the blade into his back, until it reached his heart. 

The weapon’s peculiar nature is still a point of debate among vampire scholars. The Milanese school (founded by a peculiar group of Giovani sages) tends to consider the weapon a metaphoric representation for the phallic function, since it was the queen to perpetrate the act as Aegisthus observed from the shadows. They also consider the remnant of the narrative to lead towards this very moment, only to imply that there was an inversion of roles and that such an inversion determined the repetition of the myth of Lilith, only this time employing mythical elements known in the Mediterranean (instead of the Sumerian-Hebraic version). Others, such as the Warlocks of Istambul, tend to consider the veracity of the myth, imagining that such a weapon was actually conceived to detain the king. It’s peculiar nature seems to be evocative of material transmutations, as well as some degrees of blood magic (the bones might have been used to intensify the strength of it’s user, much like certain thaumaturgy rituals that are better left unmentioned). They go as far as to try and determine the identity of the artificer, supposedly an undead sorcerer that employed Egyptian techniques to transform matter and build devices of controversial use. This theory also states that the sorcerer reappears in another myth, pertaining the true nature of Circe and her influence upon Odysseus. 

After the deed, Clytemnestra ordered the imprisonment of the lifeless body of Agamemnon. He was to be taken to a stone tomb hidden deep underneath the hills around the city. There he would wait until a torpid sleep took over him. The traditional version of the story dictates that the king spent the following years in a deep slumber, until Iphigenia’s shadow visited him in his dreams. An odd episode, whispered among Milanese chroniclers, speaks of a secular trip through the Shadownlands, in which the king was guided by his dead daughter though many realms and, ultimately, towards the lords of the Underworld, where he met Charon himself. The nature of the conversation between the two of them remains a mystery even to the wraiths, so terrible it was in nature. After the meeting, the king was taken once more to his prison, where he laid in disquieting dreams. 

Eventually, the king would be released. His saviors, fully aware of his past, his sins and his hubris, opened way to his bed of rocks and took the blade from his chest, fed him and dressed him. After he reacquainted himself with the night skies and the cold breeze that came from the north, he was taken to the leader of that expedition. Barely recognizable, the man that stood before him seemed to hold a place of honor in the kings fractured memories. It was only after he heard the man’s voice that he realized he stood before Odysseus of Ithaca. He seemed older, his body covered in countless scars, his visage so distant from the regal image that once prowled the Trojan fields. Odysseus saluted the old ally, informing him about the fate of his lineage and the passage of time. It more than a thousand years had passed, and Greece had become the province of a once great empire, now doomed to fall. 

Still, all that did not matter. The main reason of his release was far more personal. Odysseus informed him about the persistent ways of his creator, an ancient vampire once imprisoned underneath the temple of Apollo. His release hung upon the princes of Greece as the most sacrilegious of transgressions. One my one, they had been contacted by a group of watchers, dedicated to cut short the ancient’s influence upon the Mediterranean. Those who agreed to cooperate would join the watcher’s efforts in some way. Those who didn’t, well…. Fate would do quick judgement of them.

The king felt guilty for his former transgressions. They hung heavily upon his head, notably the treacherous sacrifice of his daughter to Poseidon. The centuries he spent in the Shadowlands – Were they dreams fueled by guilt? – inclined his heart towards redemption. He accepted the tutelage of Odysseus and his companions, and in exchange he landed his services and attempted to find his former sire. 
The next decades were spent in this search. Eventually Agamemnon found his way to the conclave that housed other vampires of his blood. There, in a fortress built in the west, he discovered the extension of the evils that lurked in darkness. An entire family of undead creatures capable of visiting the darkest places of the Abyss had spawned, and he bore their blood. His heart doubted. Perhaps the dreams he had so long ago were to be true. Perhaps there would be a way to bring his daughter back and redeem himself for her virginal tears and her own lost offspring, never to be. 

Scholars diverge once more on the circumstances of Agamemnon’s story, from then on. If he existed, it is certain he did not persist in using the same name. Some say this would have happened because of Baali influences upon his habits, a topic to be discussed elsewhere. This makes particularly difficult tracing his activities and whereabouts through the subsequent eras of his un-life.
Either way, most vampire scholars agree that, whatever his dispositions, they most likely ended being fulfilled during the Lasombra revolt. Either he profited from the opportunity to lend the fatal blow against his sire, or he used the occasion to vanish and pursue other interests – most likely the rescue of his daughter. At this point, the narrative is quite inconclusive. Nevertheless, undead trying to find a way to bring dead souls back are not as rare a sight as one would consider. Who is to tell if Agamemnon doesn’t have his identity hidden among such men, still searching for a way to quench Iphigenia’s rage by bringing her back…