Cinna Minux is an ancient vampire of Ardis Vala, the first knight of the Knights of the Scar of the Sun, who was expelled from the order and hid for centuries in the depths of the Ardis Vala Mega-Dungeon. He was beheaded after offering the Seekers of Ardis Vala a deal they refused.
| Type | Character (vampire) |
| Location | Court of the Thegn, Ardis Vala Mega-Dungeon |
| Sword | Sars, twin of one of the Sister Swords |
| Status | Dead (beheaded) |
| Spanish entry | Cinna Minux |
Background
Cinna holds a hidden dominion over old Archontean chapels and administrative chambers in the Court of the Thegn; his main lair lies deepest in the chapels.
He is the brother of the lady who ruled the bucolic orphanage where one of the Seekers was raised: a woman of absolute grace and painted lips who slept with a sword in the middle of her bed and fed on the children who passed on the wrong side of the blade. Both siblings were made vampires by the same maker, the horned alien master of the Rudishva lineage. After his expulsion Cinna lived on dark scriptures and rats, spying on his sister’s impious acts with devices and mirrors able to see through stone.
Court and caution
Through heightened charm he gathered a “court” over which he presides as lord and master: lesser vampires he created, charmed adventurers, charmed dungeon monsters, and a wide network of charmed informants across Ardis Vala.
He is cautious above all. He avoids the Knights of the Scar of the Sun (the Bastion and the Citadel of the Scar of the Sun) and does not want them to learn of him. He tightly controls his minions’ comings and goings. Few in the dungeon know he exists; the bestial Varumani of the nearby caves know only that “the area is haunted”. Anyone who stumbles on his lair is noticed at once and quickly ambushed.
Powers and abilities
- A subjugating gaze that few resist, with a longer reach than others of his kind.
- A draining touch, as is usual for vampires.
- Mist, bat and wolf forms; wounds that close by themselves.
- The weaknesses of his kind: sunlight, running water, silver, holy symbols.
The encounter and death
A Seeker carrying the Egg of Ritornelo first saw him as a figure that appeared, vanished and turned to gas, holding a sword identical to his own: the two were twin katanas. Three servants with the empty faces of the dominated came down the redoubt, then the master showed himself, old and ill-fed: “Yo soy su maestro” (“I am your master”). He recognized the Seeker’s blade as “la gemela de mi oscura” (“the twin of my dark one”).
He proposed a purge of the dungeon’s creatures (the goblin kingdom, the evil heketi, the fish-men, the mafia trolls) and asked for help defeating his maker, whom he could not face, so as to recover the woman who had been his companion for centuries. His best card: he would lead them toward what he believed was the path to the stars, though he admitted he had not got past its guardian. He warned that the egg was real, from the world of intelligence, and that bursting it could paint the walls of the whole complex, or of the world.
Earlier he had offered a stake from the firewood. In the dark of a flooded chamber the Seeker threw him “the egg”, in fact a rock wrapped in a black scarf; when Cinna caught it with both hands, the Seeker drove that same stake into him. A duel of twin katanas followed until the white sword of his maker, Malaquita, cut off his head. The knights recognized the corpse: “¡Es el primer caballero! ¡Nunca encontramos su sarcófago!” (“It’s the first knight! We never found his sarcophagus!”). He had been using it as a bed.
Conflicting accounts
- Background material places him in the Court of the Thegn as lord of a court; the account of his death places him in a redoubt above the ebony doors as an exile eating rats. Whether these are one entity with two seats, or two Minux, is unresolved.
- Background speculation, before his death was recorded, made him a possible lateral relative of Master Malakita, a predecessor or collateral descendant of the Masracht, an unrelated vampire, or a dormant piece activated during the Fifteen-Year Hiatus as part of the Ravenloft domain. The same material weighed an expanded domain after the defeat of the Varumani, alliance or rivalry with Pope Alejandro Sixto, and a link to the vampirized Caladan.