Editing Avery Darling (section)

== Agent of the Moirai ==
This ancient and obscure Shadow Cult is known only by the name of the Fates in the Greek myths of Classical Antiquity and most Kindred consider them nothing but a myth. But the weavers are all too real, as Elaine found out. Their unseen masters watch and change what they call the Great Tapestry; they trace the threads of history, discover the recurring patterns, and manipulate them when they see the pattern beginning to repeat; grasping the shuttle, holding the scissors to cut the threads of lives, and changing the picture whenever it needs to according to their unknown and unknowable purposes.

The cult recruits members all over the world, looking for natural psychics, gifted observers, artful dissemblers. Potential recruits are tested by twisted and dangerous riddles. Those that make it through, solve the puzzle, exhibit the ability to change the Tapestry, get inducted into the ranks of the Moirai. They are given strange potions of mystically altered vitae and subjected to a mixture of intense brainwashing and rigorous training before they are released as agents into the wild. 

Active operatives of the Moirai receive visions that instruct them to do things: political policies, financial decisions, relationships, intimidation and murder, the creation of ghouls, the forging of Vinculi, even the Embrace or destruction of a vampire, all without any apparent motive beyond the ancient plan to alter the Great Tapestry. Most of the Moirai follow these directives without understanding what effects their actions will cause - but they will die in the attempt to fulfill their tasks because the way their minds have been shaped.

The Moirai had long been present in London, some of its covert operatives studying the means and meaning of the mystically reoccurring cull of its supernatural inhabitants that happens in roughly 400 year intervals. One of its agents - whom Elaine never got to know except under the guise of Cassie Newton, taken from her memories and adopted for their lessons together - had taken notice of Elaine long before and had been instructed to watch her more closely once her investigations had been begun. 

“Cassie” had intercepted Elaine in her flight from Alistair’s wrath and hidden her in a secret safehouse of the Shadow Cult. She was staked into torpor and put away for reeducation and future use. The operative used Moirai magics to obscure Elaine’s existence and began to covertly destroy all documents and other signs that she had ever existed, making her fade from everyone’s memory, in order to create a blank slate to be used as an agent in the future.

In her sleep, which lasted decades, she was subjected to a mixture of supernaturally induced conditioning and a multitude of vinculi to hidden members of the cult. The Moirai were careful to preserve Elaine’s personality (and her Allan persona) because those were what had given her her determination and made her so efficient, but they added many subconscious layers of programming to be triggered through subliminal messages hidden in everyday objects, such as advertisement pictures, newspaper headlines, popular songs and so forth. They also induced a fervent belief in the work of safeguarding and editing the Great Tapestry by making her believe that it was to keep humanity safe and the world stable, things which had been driving forces for her.

Elaine was reawakened from torpor after the outbreak of World War II and trained by “Cassie” - or rather, a progression of different operatives, specializing in different areas of tradecraft, all wearing Cassie Newton’s face - to serve as an agent for the Shadow Cult. The unique properties of her Mnemosyne bloodline would help her absorb entire lives and identities from drinking blood which, in addition to her Obfuscate discipline and talent for con artistry, would make her an expert infiltrator, completing spy missions.

Her first mission, two years later, took her to occupied France, where she sabotaged the plans of a coterie of occultist Nazi vampires who had come with Wehrmacht forces, seeking to locate and drain several mystically potent, hibernating elders of Celtic heritage sleeping in the catacombs of Paris. Slipping into a host of roles from a newsboy, to a butler, to the mistress of an SS major, to the man himself, she slowly and methodically worked her way into the inner circle of the vampire conspiracy behind the Ahnenerbe adherents. Her mission, which included a lot of near-miss discoveries and potential death situations proved to be a success, when in the end, Elaine assassinated Ventrue leader Wolfgang von Mansfeld, stole and destroyed the only map to the resting place of the elders and collapsed the tunnels leading there. She escape wartime Paris after a year by the skin of her teeth. The experience was… exhilarating.

Many more missions would follow over the years. Elaine lived for her work and her belief that what she was doing served a higher purpose for the good of humanity made her vampire nature and the subsistence on blood bearable to her. For someone as quickly addicted to pleasure and drugs, the needs of her undead existence made her even more of a hedonist than before, even as she reviled herself for giving in to her urges at the same time. She hated free time and could not stand to be alone with herself. Elaine would await each new mission eagerly and she would usually sink into despair and depravity when she had nothing to do.

All throughout the Cold War and up to the turn of the Millenium, Elaine moved from place to place, slipped into guise after guise, completed mission after mission and met with yet another “Cassie” from time to time. Then, in 2005, the unthinkable happened. All contact to her handler(s) broke off and she received no further messages from the Moirai.