The Veluchi (1353-1750)

Veluchi
Veluchi abruptly changed the traditions of the luperci. He had a villa built in Ariccia, three miles away and commanded the luperci to begin to breed with humans. He became an avid scholar and magician with the outward embracing of Christianity all the while performing secret rites in the grove and temple. He took a wife from among the rich and influential aristocratic Savelli family who had control of Ariccia. Veluchi's grove rites were a distortion of the Great Rite and brought even more power and influence to his bloodline and the Savelli. He also performed human child sacrifice in a ritual to the fallen angel Samael each October 1st, using children he intentionally bred into peasant girls as part of the rites. The child would be killed and its cooked flesh consumed by him and the luperci. Veluchi did not age.

Then in 1372, Veluchi had his own daughter Isabella brought to the grove and he raped her during the grand rite. She successfully smuggled her male baby out of Ariccia with the help of a Savelli cousin who took him to Florence. Allegra was able to take one of the babies of a maid servant and present it to Veluchi as her own. The girl baby, Allegra, was spared by Veluchi and Isabella faithfully raised it.

Lorenzo Veluchi
Lorenzo Veluchi was raised in secret by Savelli cousins of his mother who had been raised on stories of La Bella Pellagrina and had sympathesies towards the Old Religion though they were Catholic. Lorenzo grew up well-educated and provided for in Florence there in the flowering of the Renaissance. His existence did not go unnoticed by his father, who tried to kill him first through magical means and thereafter through assassination Each time Lorenzo miraculously survived. He in turn learned about his origins and became a skilled swordsman and magician in his own right. He discovered his shapeshifting abilities by accident during a visit to Rome with him foster-father when he was exploring the ruins of a nymphaeum and inadvertingly stumbled into the otherworld where he was attacked by a luperci guardian- and responded in kind. This guardian, upon hearing his story, told him that he had to go to Lake Nemi and challenge Veluchi while he was in the temple and taught him the words to use.

Lorenzo followed through, going to Lake Nemi right before the next rite and confronting his father in 1399. He successfully killed him but was badly injured in the process. Allegra nursed him back to health. They fell in love and married and became the founders of the Veluchi family, the guardians of the grove from which Jewellian was descended.

Jewellian Veluchi
A direct descenJewelliandent of Lorenzo and Allegra, Jewellian Veluchi was born in 1723. His mother Liliana had conceived him in the grove while performing the Great Rite- alone on May Day. Liliana was the most powerful witch born to the family since Aradia herself. She was also half-mad and singing and dancing nude in the grove during a thunderstorm, she upon the gods and devils, promising herself to whichever of them claimed her. Lightning struck a nearby tree and Liliana felt herself thrown down and ravished. She awoke the next morning in the muddy grove near the temple, feeling life stirring inside of her. Jewellian came tearing out of her womb on Oct 31st- quite literally. He was born with fur and claws and escaped into the woods. The Veluchi hunted for him but could not find him.

Jewellian was adopted by the luperci of otherworld, taken into the shadowland and taught how to live first as a wolf before living as a man. He became the Rex Nemorsis when he achieved his full maturity around 1730. He successfully killed a challenger each subsequent year, singing the death songs that the luperci taught him, honoring the Old Gods.

Then in 1750, the Faerie Queen Doamna Zinelor brings Diangeuaw to the temple and he challenges Jewellian. The blood-drinker and the feral shape-shifter battle furiously but Diangeauw succeeds in overcoming him. They both bit each other duing the battle and afterwards, Diangeauw stretches Jewellian over his lap and drinks deeply of him but when Doamna Zinelor urges him to kill Jewellian and become the new king of the grove, the vampire draws back and refuses. Instead, he lays Doamna down upon the floor and grabbing Jewellian by the neck, he uses him vicariously.. claiming him as he claims her. Together, the Great Rite is performed and Doamna is able to reconnect the otherworld to the human world and the Resurgence begins.

see also Jewellian & Storm