Profile
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 170 lbs
Age: 31
Species: Human
Occupation: Junior Warden/Brother of the Cross, former FBI special agent

Physical
Cameron is good-looking and physically fit, with semi-sloppy brown hair and green eyes. He usually dresses in low-cost but decent business suits or business-casual wear, a habit from his days in the Bureau.

Psychological
Typically humble, Amadis has a quirky and dry sense of humor. Though he gripe about it, Amadis is more than willing to help those that he believes are in need. He is a strong believer of personal freedom and free will, and has unusual views on matters of fate and destiny.

Common Knowledge
Cameron isn’t hard to get ahold of—he attends Church at least twice a week, usually on Wednesday and Sunday, and most members of his congregation know how to get in touch with him. He is also said to love the beach.

Background
Raised in a middle-class family in the suburbs of Southern California, Cameron was born to a French-American father and an American mother.

His family on his father’s side has a history of military and police service – his grandfather was an OSS officer during World War 2, and his grandmother was a member of the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris. They met there, and after the war they returned to California and were married. Their son – an only child – served a tour in the Marines during the Vietnam war and managed to avoid a second tour of duty by going into a career in law enforcement back stateside. He opposed the war on moral grounds, but supported the soldiers themselves, and saw most members of the peace movement as angry cowards. A few had messages that he agreed with, however – one of them being the woman he would eventually marry, a stereotypical hippy girl that was smarter than she let on. After several years, he wound up as a detective in the Los Angeles area, bouncing between Homicide and Narcotics as department focus shifted.

His mother’s family is similar in some ways – his grandfather was a soldier in World War 2 as well, and married his high school sweetheart before being shipped off to die a gruesome death at Omaha Beach in Normandy, and his grandmother was forced to raise their daughter alone until she remarried almost ten years later. The girl that resulted was wild and rebellious, and had radical ideas about personal freedom and women’s liberation. When the Vietnam war broke out she immediately joined the peace movement and got into no small amount of trouble – she wound up on an FBI watch list and was considered a possible subversive, but before any real evidence could be generated the war ended and she cut off her ties to the various organizations that she’d been associated with, marrying a soldier turned police officer that followed his conscience as well as his oaths. Eventually she attended college and wound up as a defense attorney in the Los Angeles area, which caused no small amount of arguments with her police officer husband.

Cameron’s childhood was normal, by most standards – there wasn’t any major trauma, though he was constantly encouraged and heavily influenced by both parents to pursue some kind of career in law. In the end, Cameron decided that being an attorney wasn’t up his alley, and being part of a local police force was a little small-time for his taste. After graduating UCLA with a degree in Criminology with a dual minor in Psychology and Languages, he joined the FBI as a field agent and investigator and was posted in the New York field office.

For the first few years he mostly assisted other agents with existing cases, running down leads and the like. He had a good nose for evidence, and worked his way quickly to special agent, earning his own cases to run. Most of these were simple enough, but after a handful of years he was turned onto an arms dealer in the DC area named William O’Conner. He worked the case for a while until he had a good idea of what was going on, then took the liberty of going undercover and taking part in a few sales. The relatively meager salary of an FBI field agent, combined with the temptation of dealing with large amounts of difficult-to-trace merchandise and cash, was Cameron’s downfall – he started skimming money and weapons, siphoning funds that he received from the agency into several private bank accounts and, at the same time, removing some of the choice items from the weapons he “acquired” to sell them on the street, generating even more money.

Cameron wasn’t quite as smart as he thought – another agent by the name of Greg Byron caught wind of what was happening and opened his own investigation. Byron was able to make contact with Cameron’s arms dealer and clue the man into what was going on, using threats of prosecution as leverage to gain even more information and evidence against the dirty agent. Cameron was busted, he just didn’t know it yet.

It all went bad when Byron finally pounced after a particularly juicy weapons deal. Local cops and FBI agents swooped in on Cameron, and he panicked and ran without thinking. He thought he’d lost his pursuers, but took a turn down an alley and wound up staring at a blank brick wall, freshly spraypainted with the words “there is NO ESCAPE” in white. That was a bit ominous for Cameron’s taste, and he couldn’t bring himself to turn and run again. He stared at the wall for several minutes until the pursuing agents caught his trail again and cuffed him.

Cameron’s trial was a formality – there was a mountain of evidence against him, and his own defense wasn’t particularly inspired. The disgraced agent seemed resigned to his fate, and wasn’t surprised when a guilty verdict was handed down. He was sentenced to ten years in a federal prison.

Life as a convict was hard on him – at his core, Cameron was a creature of morality, but he’d lost his way. The naked brutality and hate that was rife in prison opened his eyes and showed him the real error of his ways. The straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, came one day when a group of three men assaulted him in the cafeteria for no reason other than he was a cop in jail. Alone, he wouldn’t have stood a chance, but another inmate immediately jumped into the brawl and managed to turn the tide. The penalty for being involved in a fight was shared by all five men – a day in solitary for the two that had just been defending themselves, and three days for the instigators.

After only a few hours in the SHU, Cameron was fairly sure that he was losing his mind. There was nothing to do, and his mind craved some sort of stimulus. After pacing around the room for several hours, he bumped his knee against his cot and set to cursing in pain. He let that entertain him for a few moments before he noticed that his clumsiness had bumped the cot away from the wall a bit – and a few sheets of paper had fallen to the floor from where they’d been previously hidden between the bed and wall. He scooped them up quickly, and found that they were pages torn from a bible – Proverbs 8, specifically. A handful of verses were even highlighted.

“You who are simple, gain prudence; you who are foolish, gain understanding.” – Proverbs 8:5

“Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her. I, wisdom, dwell together with prudence; I possess knowledge and discretion.” – Proverbs 8:10-12

“I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me. With me are riches and honor, enduring wealth and prosperity. My fruit is better than fine gold; what I yield surpasses choice silver.”—Proverbs 8:17-19

“Listen to my instruction and be wise; do not ignore it. Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the LORD, but whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death.” – Proverbs 8:33-36

The words struck Cameron deep in his soul, and he quickly tucked the pages away so that they wouldn’t be found when he was taken back to his own cell. For the rest of that day, he repeated the words quietly to himself, and they gave him immense comfort.

Once he was released back into the general population, Cameron sought out the man that had helped him. The events of the fight hadn’t given him a chance to study the man’s features, but now he recognized him – Simon Weston, one of the many that he’d pursued and testified against and sent away. The two struck up an amicable conversation, and when Cameron asked why the man had helped him, he was answered with a shrug and a smile. “It seemed right.”

That was the first time that Cameron ever felt the tangible effect of faith. A few days later, he noticed the man reading a Bible, and was glad to see that he wasn’t the only person who had gained something for his soul in the event.

After that, Cameron was a model inmate. He stayed out of trouble and, when his first parole hearing came up, his request was granted. Cameron was paroled and set up with a work release program and temporary housing. He put in a good word for his new friend on the inside as well, but that man’s crimes carried a heavier punishment – it would be another five or six years before his first parole hearing came up.

Cameron settled down in Virginia, in the Hampton Roads area. Three years after his release, his case was reviewed and, in light of his work history and parole officer’s reports on him, his sentence was reduced to time served. During those three years, Cameron behaved himself – he took whatever work that the work release program sent his way and did it to the best of his ability. He started going to church, and developed a good repartee with the Preacher there as well as a few members of the congregation, and generally just tried to help people and stay out of trouble. Occasionally he would help out some of the older congregation members, tracking down money schemes and helping get them find out what had happened to their life savings that they’d been conned out of by using his own intuition and a few of his old FBI contacts.

One day, Cameron read an article in the paper about a minor wave of grave robberies targeting the historical colonial sites and, out of curiosity, started looking into matters. It wasn’t difficult to do – the authorities probably had some trouble tracking it down because, no matter how good your snitch is, there’s probably a decent chance that somebody knows he’s a snitch. Cameron, however, was a well-known bureau failure and ex-convict. He tracked the robberies to a band of gypsies in the area and went to visit them – mostly curious about just what they were doing rather than from any overwhelming desire to get them to stop.

Upon his arrival, Cameron was immediately sat down before a gypsy fortune teller. The old woman handed him a deck of tarot cards and said “Shuffle.” With something close to bemusement, Cameron did as he was told, shuffling for a few moments. “Is that enough?” The old woman shrugged in response. “Only if you think it is.”

Cameron shuffled the cards again, then handed them back. “It is a tradition of our family here that newcomers must go through a reading before we will speak with them. It is a way of knowing their heart and mind, so whatever dealings we have are done with honesty. The first card is your significator – it identifies who or what you are.”

The old woman turned over the card – the Knight of Swords. This seemed to get her attention for a reason that wasn’t clear to Cameron, but he went through the rest of the reading. Little was explained to him, though the old woman muttered to herself frequently in what he thought sounded like Italian and seemed to find it all very insightful.

Cameron only remembers a handful of the cards and their accompanying, brief explanations. The Knight of Swords represented him, and the Wheel of Fortune was named as his immediate challenge. The Queen of Cups was identified as an external influence, as was the Knight of Wands. The final card that was drawn wasn’t shown to him – when it was turned up on the table the old woman hid it from his view with her hand. It seemed significant to her, however.

In the end, the old woman swept the cards up again. “We have a gift for you, Knight of Swords. It has been in our possession for some time, however, and we believe that it is too important to give to a stranger – even a stranger who the cards seem to favor. Stay with us for a while, let us learn of you, and if things are as they seem your task will become clear.”

Cameron spent the next few weeks visiting the gypsies for at least a few hours every day. He became fast friends with another one of their guests who was visiting (and later learned that the man was a pyromancer named Peter Benlow), and after some time was given a lacquered wooden case. “Take this back with you, and show it to your Preacher friend. Ask him of its history and meaning. He will know what comes next.”

Though fiercely curious, Cameron agreed and took the case back with him. The next day he arrived to speak with the Preacher (who had been booked with appointments, but a handful of them were conveniently cancelled). When the case was first opened, Cameron was confused – he recognized it as a sword but he wasn’t sure why it was so important. The Preacher, on the other hand, gasped and started speaking in Latin under his breath.

The sword was a Spanish-style rapier with a bell guard and basket hilt. The hilt and guard looked downright ancient – in good condition for their apparent age, but there were obvious knicks and battlescars. The blade was significantly newer, though still probably at least 100 years old, and made of simple but sharp and serviceable steel in much better shape than the weapon’s hilt and pommel. “This is Prudentia. Where did you get this?” The sword was named for the Roman virtue of Prudence, which is traditionally associated with foresight, wisdom, and personal discretion. Cameron related the story to the surprised holy man, and at the end of it he got a smile.

Cameron then got a crash course in “spooky stuff.” It was easier for him to grasp than most – his days in the bureau had shown him some strange things, and his recent experiences had only caused him to question the reality around him more than before. Still, he had some trouble adapting. Over the next several months he spoke to both the Preacher and the gypsy band, and came to accept the relative truth of things.

Cameron left the sword at the church, but after his tutelage in the supernatural aspects of the world, the Preacher offered it back to him. “It is yours to carry. You’ve been chosen for a higher purpose, and I will have no trouble sleeping at night knowing that a man of your character is entrusted with such a thing.”

Cameron was then told about the Brotherhood of the Cross and the weapons that were handed down to their members. He was also told, in vague terms, that there was a higher order – the Knights of the Cross, sometimes called the Knights of the Sword – that battled alongside the Brotherhood sometimes, and that both served the Almighty and battled against the devils in the dark.

Months passed, with Cameron battling a few minor supernatural evils that plagued the local area and some members of his church’s congregation. He received a call one night to come to the church, so the Preacher could introduce him to someone. There he met Thomas Hesterly, and was asked to assist in a raid on a vampire stronghold in DC to free a handful of people who had been captured.

Of course, he agreed.

Peter Benlow, the man that Cameron had met in the gypsy camp was called in as well, and together the two of them, along with Hesterly, returned to DC. Cameron was surprised and a bit uneasy to see that William O’Conner (now a vampire hunter and rune mage) was involved intimately – one of those captured was the man’s girlfriend, Lyrical Briggs.

The raid went as well as could be expected – a wizard, a fire magus, and a “holy knight” (though Cameron would never call himself such a thing) raided the abandoned industrial compound that the brood of Red Court vampires had been using as a hideout and rooted them out. The hostages were saved and left with only a few minor injuries, and Cameron made fast friends with Lyrical.

4 Truths and 1 Lie:

1. Cameron’s humble demeanor is all a front—he actually believes that the sword was given to him so he could dispense God’s justice as he sees fit.
2. Everybody knows that once you’re an agent, you’re always an agent. Amadis still has strong ties to the Bureau, despite his ex-con status.
3. Everybody knows that once you’re a thief, you’re always a thief. Cameron is being watched by at least a few people in the Bureau who are still suspicious of him—especially now that he’s spending time with William O’Conner again.
4. Cameron has unique ideas about God and faith. He attends a Christian church as a nod of respect, but he doesn’t consider himself a Christian.
5. Despite his criminal background, Cameron craves order. He is attempting to locate and make contact with other members of his “Brotherhood” and make their organization something more official and concrete.