Askold Stode was born 789 AC in a little village in the land of Göingar in what today is western Småland in Sweden. He grew up to becom a fur hunter and woodman as most others at that time. They lived in a little village along with three other families by a little lake today named Finnveden. When Askold got older it fell naturally that he became one of the defenders of the village and thus was trained in the use of one of the three swords the village owned together since he showed great talent with weapons of all kind. The swords wasn´t of great quality but they filled their purpose but due to the low quality the sword had after many battles he came to use it less and less in favour for spear and bow. He was good at fighting the rumor soon sounded long way outside the village area and this reached the kings ears who lured him into joining the army. After a short basic training period he was sent away on a warparthy against the baldheaded who invaded in great numbers from the south over the land of Jellinge. Whemn the battle finally stood it was fierce and brutal but also short. It ended in victory for Göingarna and only a few enemies managed to escape the battlefield and the few who were captured was hung in a Ashtree. Askold returned and was honored for bravery after that several of the other soldiers had told how he had fought down the baldheadeds commander singlehandedly. Askold himself, who wasn´t to intellectually bright, didn´t know this at the battle field, to him it had just been amnother enemy. For this he came to serve in the Kings Guard, a highly respected position wich brought many advantages both when it came to status as well as wealth. With Askolds income his family could afford new better equipment as well as more land and animals and soon the family became one of the wealthier in the area. After several wars the little kingdom had grown and now included three other lesser kingdoms. For a couple of years the kingdom thrived, a coastal area had been concured and established a little harbour from wich the trade was rich. Then one day Askold happened to catch a glimpse of the Kings daugter, a redhaired greeneyed beuty, a sight for the Gods in his own meaning, surely she must have been blessed by Freya herself as beutiful as she was. He had not seen her for several years since he had been out on raids and surveyed the order in the kingdom wich by now stretched from coast to coast and consisted of several small kingdoms joined together under one King. She had been nothing but a young child when last he saw her but now she had developed into a young woman. Anja Jormsdottir as her name was dind´t overlook the appreciating looks almost every man gave her but Askold couldn´t avoid thinking she looked back at him a little different than on the other men. After some time he had gathered enough courage to ask first her about her interest then after positve answer her father the King for her hand and gained his blessing, he was after all one of the bravest and most skilled men in his entire army and now was one of the Hövitsmen (Captains) of his forces. But unknowingly to Askold and most others the King was Kinfolk to the Get of Fenris and Anja showed up to be carrier of the right genes. She had already changed once before without knowing what had happened to her and kept it secret since she had not been in view of otehrs when doing so after she realised something was wrong when the change began and ran off to the woods. But the also woods have eyes, a werewolfhating Gangrel saw her but had not had the opportunity to attack her. He got to know about the coming wedding between her and Askold and a devilish plan took form in his head. He knew that by embracing Askold not only would he cause them great misery but also take away a great warrior from them and thus caught Askold one evening and pretty easily subdued him with his superhuman powers. He abducted Askold several daymarches away and embraced him. Of course he didn´t only want to destroy for the werewolves, he also saw great potential in the warrior and thus taught him the basics about kinderd existence before leaving him to fight for himself. Afraid of what he´d become and not at peace with his new existence he avoided returning home. As a matter of fact the only thing he knew was that he now was a vampire, they lived in the night and fed on the blood of others and his Sire was a Gangrel named Hrotulf. By combining his old hunting and soldier skills with his new powers he managed the itroduction excelent but felt alone and wanted to return home. He gathered himself and finally made his way back after a couple of days. When he prowled in the bushes the Kings mansion to try to contact his loved one he was surprised by her changing to a big wolflike monster immediately before he had even showed himself and attacked. Somehow she had sensed his presence and he didn´t stay to try calming down a monster worse tahn himself and fled as fast as he could back into the woods. Anja saw who it was when he ran and stopped and managed to chake off her insticts taht screamed for her to take up the pursue and kill him. She came to her senses over what she had done and regreted it painfully but the damage was done, Askold had disappeared in the forest. She waited several days for Askold to return but finally went out to search for him herself. Meanwhile the town was in a mess since Askolds disappearance, and Hrotulf was pleased with his own mischievous deed, watching the happenings at safe distance. Anja searched for days and had to use all her powers and not a little instinct to track Askold who not only was a great hunter but now had his newwon powrs to aid him as well. She didn´t give up and finally she found him. He had escaped to the place of his embrace to get over the despair of that his loved one had tried to kill him and what she was, the Fenris wolf non the least. She found him bloody and weakened, torned from branches and rocks in a desperate attempt to kill himself avoiding to drink blood thus hoping to die that way. When she found him in this state she understood he had done it because of her, he had returned for her and she had driven him off. This filled her with love for him and despite her instincts telling her he was enemy she took care of him, trusting her heart and hunted down a deer for him to feed upon. Now this wasn´t what Hrotulf had planned and disapointed he decided to kill Askold before he regained his strength and had seen how fast Askold developed his supernatural abilities. Early in the morning he attacked hoping to be able to if not kill Askold immediately, injure him so much that he would not be able to take cover from the burning rays of the sun if Askold showed up to be a little better warrior than he thought. Wrong, Askold was a lot better warrior than he´d expected and when Anja heard the fight and was close by she came to aid Askold. Together they easily slayed Hrotulf and for a while they stayed at the place to recover. Askolds powers continued to develop with the aid of Anja who knew quite a lot about the kindred society it showed.
Askold and Anja realised after a while that they could not stay in the area and that they could not return home to the town. They fled east until they reached the sea and wandered north along the coast. Both of them learned more about their powers, especially Askold and met both vampires and werewolves occasionally, most werewolves though and more than once they had to fight for their lives, most often because of Askolds nature as vampire. But they had sworn eachother to stay at eachothers side no matter what and the love they chared meant more to them than to be with their own kind, they only needed eachother. The years passed and after almost half a century they realised what lay ahead of them as Anja showed signs of age and Askold didn´t. She still looked young due to her werewolf heritage, around the early thirties, but they knew that what they had would one day end and few lived as long as she had those days and she thought she would not live very much longer, despite the fact that her father had died old and grey after running the Kingdom for 30 years. She feared this, not because of death itself, she knew that Askold would live forever and she didn´t want to go to Valhalla and wait for him forever. She asked Askold to embrace her and make her like him, one of the damned so that they could spend eternity together. For a couple of years she asked but Askold got a gutfeeling that it would be devastating and denied her the embrace, at least until they knew more about the effects. They didn´t know then that she could stop aging by drinking his blood and become a ghoul. In their search for information upon what would happen upon embracing a werewolf they wandered north to Vänland, todays "Norrbotten". But other werewolves got hostile when Anja asked and the few kindred they met didn´t know either. They followed the coast east and south to Bjarmland(Finland) where they came in contact with a beutiful vampiress who called herself Freya. She admitted she was part of the myth about the Aesir Gods when they asked her. She explained she was of the Salubri clan, a clan devoted to aiding others as best they can. This was no exception but she thought that Askolds instincts was correct, a werewolf propably wouldn´t survive the embrace. This didn´t help them much and saddened they saw their hope about a life together disappear. They had be so convinced they would succeed in finding a way to embrace her and Anja didn´t care that she would forever turn her back on her own kind after that. They got some information from Frya though, that about Anja drinking Askolds blood on a regular basis and thus stop aging and gain some of his powers. This was a great comfort and they took farewell of this powerful wellmeaning kindred and headed further east but soon found that the language had changed and they didn´t understand the people they met nor did they understand Anja and Askold so they turned south again in hope of finding land where they spoke their own language. In their naive beliefs they thought that ancient nordic was a widespread language. Thus they came to the Balthic area where they got in contact with a trader from Gotland who helped them learn the language. After learning the language of the Rus fairly well to make themself understood they headed east again to Holmgård(Novgorod) where they came in contact with Durga Syn, a Ravnos who had put up a resistance movement against a powerful evil Nosferatu called Baba Yaga. The Iron hag as she also was called was propably in torpor at that time but she had handed over the leadership to a Gangrel named Victor and thus Askold and Anja wasn´t greeted with open arms at first but when it got clear they had come with other concerns and didn´t know of the Baba Yaga they were accepted as guests. They exchanged stories and experiences and Askold learned about easternslavic history as well as Baba Yaga. They then continued south and came to Könngård(Kiev) where they helped in the creation of a fragile peace between the Silverfangs and the Ventrue Prince that ruled there, even if they suspected that he had not entirely honest intentions. After this they headed on to Miklagård(Constantinople) and found out that the answer to their questions might be found in the Bysantine Kingdom, in the land that Askold and Anja called Särkland(Turkey) by the kindred called Cappadocians. But this was dangerous ground to travel this land outside Constantinopel because of the Children of Haqim who slayed almost anyone trespassinginto their land. Neither Askold nor Anja was particularly afraid about this but they took the warning and decided that it still was safer to search the anser elsewhere, now they at least knew that it could perhaps be done. They heard that there propably was some Cappadocians in Rome and thus went there as soon as possible. They came in contact with a Cappadocian called Macarius, child of Cassius, who traded information about their people and history for the information he had on the subject they wanted to learn. Macarius confirmed that Askolds instincts had been correct, Anja would die a horrible death if embraced just like that, but there were ways to get around it. Anja muist first be freed from her spiritual power, what he called Gnosis before she was embraced. Now this wasn´t foolproof either, there still was great risk that she would die anyway. He asked them to consider the issue for a while and remain in Rome while he asked his clansmen for further details and advise. He was very prompt about telling that if they decided to go through with it it was of uttermost importance that he and his clansmen were present to aid them with the proper rituals for it to work, wich they of course accepted gratefully. Finally they had found the answer to their quest. After going through a long and complicated ritual Macarius embraced her, he said it was safest that he who had done the ritual also stood for the embrace. For a while it look critical as Anja shivered and twisted in cramps but soon the cramps ended and she lay there as if she was dead before opening her eyes as a vampire. According to a deal they´d made Anja was to stay with him for a while to learn the basics of her new life as a Cappadocian. Of course Askold was free to stay during this time and he too learned a great deal about the kindred history and society. After Anjas time as apprentice they returned to Holmgård via Constantinopel to find that a Get of Fenris named Ruyrik had been asked by the warring slavic peoples to unite them. They decided to stay in Könngård to observe how things developed for this Viking in his attempt to unify the slavic peoples. Anja also had some wishes about see him succed because of her Get of Fenris ties. Things didn´t go better than that Askold and Anja took control over Könngård, or Kiev as the city really was called, while Ruyrik concured Novgorod a bith north of them. So they came to be part of the becoming of Russia in the middle of the 9th century. They didn´t stay long and when Oleg in the year 882 invaded the city Askold and Anja handed over the citys control to him. They pretended that Oleg had slayed them and concured the city after weak resistance from Kievs defenders. After this they traveled north again and followed a trading caravan to Hedeby where they stayed a couple of years, having started businiss in the furtrading market. Anja also studied religion while she stayed there, both Aesir and Christian religion. After a couple years they headed over to the British isles, to London to be exact. There they met some of the powerful rulers before heading on to Ireland and Dublin where they came to stay until the end of the 10th century.
In the early 11th century they came to America in the wake of Leif Ericson.After several incidents with Garous who was impossible to discuss with they left this "new" continent and returned to Reykjavik and settled down for several years as some of the few kindred there with only a few other Gangrels passing by as fellow kindred representatives. When they heard about Tremere diablerised Saulot they decided to go visit Freya and aid her if needed. This wasn´t needed but they stayed in Finland anyways finding it a relaxed place to live where hunting was good. At the end of the 14th century they visited Cassius and Macarius in Rome so that Anja could learn more about her clan discipline Mortis. Sure, Askold learned from her in return later when they were alone with eachother again as she learned from him. One thing he never got to learn though and that was her ability to move into the umbra as other werewolves did even after her embrace. He tried to work out a way to use his own disciplines to do so but didn´t succeed. Little did they know when they visited then that only half a century later the traitor Giovanni would diablerise Cappadocius and the whole clan Cappadocian would be hunted down to almost the last one of them. They got to hear about Augustos diablerie in May 1444 only weeks after it happened. They then was in Finland where they helped Freya since she at the beginning of the century entered torpor by her own will. After a couple of years the Giovannis had propably found out where Anja was because they showed up in their cottage one evening to catch her. They failed and got to feel the combined wrath of a Cappadocian Abomination elder and a Gangrel elder. Only one of the four attackers managed to escape, severly injured. Also Anja and Askold was severly injured, both had entered frenzy during the combat, the first time ever Askold entered this state and he was a bit scared after the incident but felt no remorse for the trashed Giovanni corpses left at their floor. They asumed that since one managed to escape they would return with more forces and finish what they started so they once again broke up and moved far away. 1487 they moved back to Sweden where they had lived as mortals. They settled down in a little village by the name Wardbergh defended by a castle a bit south of the city. The city was named after the fires that was set when enemy ships was sighted outside the coast on high mountains as a warning system. They built a stone cottage in the forest to live in. They also built a system of underground catacombs where they collected their treasures, not a few after centuries of travelling the known world and even the borders of it, mostly scrolls that Anja had collected and writings of her observattions, Askold was as most Gangrels little interested in the written language. By this time few remembered that Leif had discovered America and not the Christopher Columbus that a few years later "discovered" the new continent. The only way to enter the Catacombs was to earthmeld down making it impossible for anyone not already knowing about the catacombs to enter or even find them less than by accident possibly. There they lived in solitude more or less not making any noice about their existence apart from contacts with the local garous. This didn´t help and at midsummers day 1503 a large group consisting of four powerful Giovannis and a number of spirits attacked Askold and Anja who were weakened after celebrating the summersolstice with the garous the night before. There was a great battle but Askold was forced to seek cover in the earth during the fight that followed, but not until after he had killed at least one of the Giovannis by ripping his heart out, propably two but not confirmed. Upon rising from the earth the day after he couldn´t find any traces of Anja, 3 burn marks after destroyed kindreds was found but no traces of weather it was Giovannis only or one of them had been Anja. He did find tracks of the fight over a large area as if someone had tried to escape after Askold took cover. This might indicate that Anja was the one who chased someone but why was she nowhere to be found then. Because it would be unlikely that she had been the one trying to escape when she could have earthmelded like Askold. He waited a month while he both recovered and searched for Anja and went over the battle area over and over again, cursing himself for not staying at her side through the battle and swore an oath that it would never ever happen again, either both of them would stand up after the battle, or both took cover after agreeing upon that. But he never found her and a month later he begun tracking down the Giovanni. A garou who had seen part of the end of the battle helped him tracking down one of kindred leaving the area. This turned out to be one of the escaping Giovannis and after a crusade that lasted a decade he had hunted down and killed three Giovannis, one of them participating at the battle against him and Anja. He didn´t get any information from him though. This earned him some renown in the kindred society as it came to public knowledge there was a crazy Gangrel hunting the Giovanni. He asumed that Anja had somehow tried to escape through the Umbra and been killed there by the numerous spirit enemy. Askold frowned upon the reputation and meant that if the other elders had had any guts they would do the same, a kindred crime had been commited and the criminals was to be punished. After claiming revenge upon the last Giovanni directly involved in the slaying of his mate he returned to the house and lived in selfpity and remorse with his memories of Anja and his life together. He became a walking ghost stalking the woods and even mortals told stories about the ghost. Only a few Garous and and gangrels ever got in contact with him and after about a decade he entered torpor after a failed suicide attempt where he tried to burn himself to death but apparently earthmelded just before dying.
The Gangrel leader Svartklo found the elder Gangrel in torpor by accident over half a century later as he searched cover for the night in a ruin deep in the woods one day 1566 and happened to discover an underground chamber wich he went through the following night and found it partly collapsed. A few documents he found gave him the conclusion that this had been the home of an ancient vampire. He went up to the surface again and asked around carefully about anything about an elder living in the area. He found out there was a myth about an elder who lived out in the wood in the beginning of the century by his own grieving some lost love or something who one day had lied down and died in the sun. He decided not to tell anyone else about his discovery and started to visit the chamber on a regular basis if perhaps the old one had not died. After a couple of decades his hopes payed off, someone was waking up, but not in the underground chamber as he had expected but up in the ruin. And not enough with that, the man rising was a striking copy of the danish commander at the castle only a lot younger. After the awakening and a failed attempt attacking Svartklo for blood the elder, who of course was Askold, ran off to kill a deer instead. When he returned Svartklo waited for him and when aksing Askold who he was he found out Askold had amnesia of his whole past life. He figured the memory would return with time and so waited for a couple of weeks for the memory to return. He made up plans in case the amnesia would be permanent that meant that he would put up a lie to trick the old one into believing Svartklo to be his Sire and that he had been the commander of the fortress and that his name wwas Anders Bing. Then Svarklo explained the real Anders Bings entire life to Askold who came to believe that he had really been Anders Bing, a spy for the Swedes positioned in Wardberg by the danish King to rebuild the fortress after the long wars. The old one bought the story and at the same time the real commander got a deadly disease and died. When Svartklo presented Anders for the Prince two weeks after the commander had died the only one who got upset was Johan Lyngert, the Toreador primogen. He was upset because he had had the same plans but missed his chance when the commander got ill and died.
Today the only one who would know the real name of Best, as he is now known, would be Elijah, a 5th Generation Gangrel Inconnu member who he met a couple of times as a young ancillae but not since his reawakening. Perhaps Cassius also if they would ever meet again. If Anja, Macarius and Freya is still alive they too would recognise him of course. But for now, there are noone who would be able to tell who he really is since Svartklo was killed before he could tell Best, if he ever intended to.