Mark A Ashford

The Cardinal Mark A Ashford

A great schism has broken the church of Rome in two; a western church, traditional, and based in Rome. An Eastern church more progressive, powerful, and allowing female Cardinals and ultimately Popes. Vampires and humans, an age-old cycle of prey and predator. Within the vampires Lady Challis has achieved immortality and in so doing has lived through all of human history. She saw the birth of a united Upper and Lower Egypt under Pharaoh Narmer; she rode across the great Mongol Steppe as a general in the army of His Lord, Chinggis Khan. She saw the Crusades and the persecutions of innocents in the Middle ages. She guided and preserved vampires through all of these great events. Lady Challis was a confident and friend to the only female Pope, Pope Joan during the Middle Ages. With the death of Pope Joan, Lady Challis has plotted and planned for millennia to achieve a female Pope who is openly acknowledged and successful. To her massively guarded mansion, comes a female Cardinal from the Eastern Church. Cardinal Sophyra, with a request to assassinate her father the Pope, and install her as female Pope in the East. But Cardinal Sophyra is not all she seems to be...