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--- shared_worlds:benjamin_upham [2013/11/30 21:11] – RCAF Brat
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 To this day I spit whenever I see the flag of the United States of America. If it's possible, I'll spit on that flag. Hopefully I'll outlive the country that flies it.
+=== Session 6 ===
+**[[http://alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=8447343&postcount=1546|Exile and Reunions (1783-1812)]]**
+So it was that we were exiled to what is now the Canadian province of Nova Scotia in 1783. Halifax, the capitol of the Colony of Nova scotia and the main British naval base in North America, now that New York was lost to treason, was a frozen shithole swamped with refugees. Many of the displaced loyalists were 'encouraged' to move to sparsely settled portions of both Nova Scotia Colony and the Canadas, in order to strengthen the crown's hold on it's remaining possessions. We had money. Lots of money, though we didn't dare admit how much. So we got to stay. Of course we had to discreetly grease some palms here and there, and I'd had to make myself useful. Still, the place didn't remain an overcrowded shithole for long. Lots of new construction saw to that. Winters were still a bit colder than I'd been used to, but not as bad as it could have been: We could have gone to York (now known better as Toronto) or Montreal...
+It was in the tenth year of our exile that I had the first of a series of unexpected reunions. Our kind are not common. Including myself, I knew of the existence of six of us. Myself. My father. Shann. Padre Elijah. The Centurion. And the late and unlamented Beast.
+The first reunion was not completely unexpected, beyond the question of 'what took so long?': Shann noticed that the first mate of a barque bore a strong resemblance to me. The pointed questions and near close encounter with her Irish temper were headed off when the man introduced himself to us. I recognized him, but it had been so long. His birth name was Joseph Upham. My father. He was more shocked at the reunion than I was, because as far as he'd known, our condition was not heritable. He'd believe that he'd been damned to outlive all of his children along with all of his friends. For him to know that he still had a son gave him joy that I could not understand at the time. Though the encounter did leave me with the hope that perhaps I was not damned to outlive all of my children: That perceived curse was the reason that my relationship with Shann had, to that point, been childless. That fear had also caused Shann to go to great lengths to keep herself barren, even after having met another of her own kind. Father and I parted with the promise that we would not go over 400 years before we met again. We also promise to attempt to give one another fair warning before relocating or changing identities.
+The second reunion came as an absolute shock. Well, it was actually two separate reunions and the beginning of a friendship with yet another of our kind, but they all came at the same time. As I said during the course of our first session: Must be genetic, as I still can count one brother, several children, and my father among the living. As far as I know anyways. I was reunited with my younger and only brother. And I met his wife. Who he'd married in Scotland in 1475. There are genetics involved in our condition, even if the whole picture hasn't yet been figured out. We know more now than we knew than, and most of what we know has been learned only in the last ten years. Mom had to have been a near miss, a person who had most of the markers that make us what we are. Not all of them, but enough to fill in the gaps left over from father's half of our makeup. She may have died at the age of 44, but her legacy passed to both of her children. Through us she'd live forever, or at least close enough that it would not matter. My brother's birth name was Daniel, a name from the bible. It seems that all of his various pseudonyms have started with the letter D, probably to make them easier for him to remember. (Like how mine have always started with a B. Shann's have always been the names of her sisters, none of whom were eternal, but all of whom live on in her heart.) His current one is that of the patron saint of Wales. My sister-in-law pulls hers from the bible, even though she's long since become an atheist. (I don't blame her, as being of out kind makes it so easy for one to lose hope.) The third guest that we received that day, who'd travelled across the Atlantic with my brother (on business unrelated to me: they were settling in the New World in order to escape some awkward questions in the Old) was a young woman that I'd thought that I'd never see again. She was from my village, was only a year younger than I and was the closest thing to a sister that I'd had. Her parents had encouraged us to marry, but we'd thought of each other as brother and sister and so I was able to get my father to talk them out of it. Shortly before I'd left for good, her dick of a husband had levelled accusations of witchcraft against her as she'd kept her youth while he hadn't. Said accusations had ended with her suicide. I'd found the whole affair deeply disturbing, and it had probably hastened my own departure. More disturbing had been the fact that her body had simply disappeared while we'd all been arguing over where she'd be buried. Suicides cannot receive a Christian burial. But driving one to suicide by threatening them with a truly hideous end via false accusations was murder, right? And one who has been murdered can receive a Christian burial. I'd always believed that her asshole husband had fed her to his pigs in order to make the fight just go away. Four hundred and forty years later I was proven spectacularly wrong when my oldest friend walked in through the front door, having been invited in by my long-lost brother. Had I been ephemeral, I'd probably have dropped dead from the shock. Rachel had returned from the dead. I saw them again more often, but then I at least lived on the same continent.
+To us, the number of known eternals was now nine. The ones known to my brother or to my father increased that total to twenty one. A study of what papers we'd taken from The Beast revealed that he'd known or known of an additional thirty of our kind. And that he'd had copies of those documents, that we either hadn't taken, hadn't found or hadn't had time to burn. That meant that we had inadvertently revealed them to others. I mentioned the consequences of that last time, but I forgot to mention that I had no idea at the time of just how much damage I'd done in one night. The fact that the rebellion had only gotten stronger as time went on, no matter the force that was brought to bear against them, had baffled me. As had the fact that the Patriots had gained allies from those who should have known that helping them went against their own long term interests, as subsequent events in France had demonstrated quite starkly.
+There were more of out kind about that I'd realized, hoped or feared. Hopefully there aren't too many grudges held from that. I know that it is a belated admission, but the passage of time does calm tempers. All I can do really is apologize and say that I have learned that there may be unintended consequences to action that I undertake. Next time an eternal proves to be a murderous son-of-a-bitch, when I perma-kill him I'll do my best to find, recover and/or destroy all of his documents so as not to expose any of our kind to 'difficulties'. If he proves adept at hiding his stuff and I miss something, well that's not my fault as I'll be taking a reasonable precautions before I act.
+Oh, and less than 30 years after I was chased out of Boston, I got a chance to give the traitors a bloody nose. It wasn't the crushing victory that I'd hoped for (had the frogs rolled over sooner it would have been), but the sods got a bloody nose and learned that they could, in fact, be beaten.
 ==== Personal information ====
-**Birth Name:**\\
+**Birth Name:** Benjamin Upham\\
-**Birth Date:** \\
+**Birth Date:** 13? December 1335\\
-**Birth Place:**\\
+**Birth Place:** <expunged> Kingdom of England\\
-**Status at Birth:** \\
+**Status at Birth:** Firstborn son of the Sheriff of <expunged>\\
-**Relation to other Eternals:** \\
+**Relation to other Eternals:** Son of Joesph Upham of <expunged>.  Married to Shann of Cork.  Brother of <expunged> Upham of <expunged>.  Father of <expunged>, <expunged>, <expunged>, and <expunged>.\\
-**Current Pseudonym:**\\
+**Current Pseudonym:** <expunged>\\
-**Past Pseudonyms:**\\
+**Past Pseudonyms:** <expunged>\\
-**Current Home:** \\
+**Current Home:** <expunged>, Alberta, Canada\\
-**Past Homes:** \\
+**Past Homes:** <expunged> (England), <expunged., <expunged>, <expunged> and Cordoba (Spain), Havana (Cuba), Kingston and Montego Bay (Jamaica), Boston (Massachusetts), Halifax, Moncton, Alliston and Calgary (Canada)\\
-**Current Occupation:** \\
+**Current Occupation:** <expunged>\\
-**Skills:** \\
+**Skills:** Swordfighting, wrestling, swimming, horseback riding, boxing, archery, marksmanship, drinking, whoring, piracy, chemical engineering and tax evasion.\\
-**Languages Spoken:** \\
+**Languages Spoken:** English, French, Spanish, <expunged>, <expunged>, <expunged>, German, Italian, Latin, Greek, Arabic and Russian.\\
 ==== See Also ====