Hiram Henry Bratt
Hidden Patriarch of the Bratt Family
Milos Bratovich came to Ellis Island in 1910 with a wave of Eastern European immigrants escaping forced assimilation and economic hardship in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was renamed “Milo Bratt” and sent on his way. After falling on tough times in New York, Milo moved with his large family south, hitting most of the major metropolises on the Atlantic coast before settling into Miami in the aftermath of the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, one of the deadliest hurricanes in recorded history. Land prices were cheap and got only cheaper after the Great Depression. Lake Okeechobee, the largest freshwater lake in Florida and the seventh largest in the entire U.S., attracted many low income tourists in the state who could not afford the ritzy, resort-like atmosphere in Miami. While poor white “rednecks” are considered synonymous with North Florida and the panhandle, in fact Okeechobee is very rural and white in character as part of the “Florida Heartland,” more similar to the Deep South than the rest of South Florida.
Milo Bratt was not just any migrant trying to make good in the U.S. He had arrived with an agenda, setting up cells of the Bratovich revenant family to serve the Sabbat and their Tzimisce masters. The bigamous Milo had wives in every city he visited, but it was in Okeechobee that Milo retired, to a dilapidated mansion on the shores of the lake. It was there Hiram Henry Bratt was born, and since the children were raised communally by Milo and his wives, Hiram was never sure who his mother was. His father terrorized him for as long as he could remember, beating and berating him for faults real and imagined. Weaned on hate and anger, he grew into a mean animal of a man, appropriate as he soon found himself responsible for breeding Tzimisce hellhounds.
Hiram had an excellent eye for selecting dogs for their size and viciousness and he had a knack for turning out dogs as rough and nasty as he was. More than once he killed dogs with his bare hands that he felt were defective. This penchant for killing eventually branched out to human beings, and Hiram became a serial killer, one of the deadliest in Florida's history. Only a small number of his victims were ever found, however, most disposed of in the kennels. Those few who were found drew the attention of the police and Hiram was called to account before his overlords.
He was spared, but only because of his inroads into breeding new and different varieties of unnatural, hideous beasts, including the American crocodile in the Everglades south of Okeechobee.
It was this creative use of Husbandry that earned him Damnation instead of execution. To this day, he is still involved in the rearing and training of animals for the Miami Sabbat, overseeing “family business” as managed by the current Bratt chief, Jeremiah Bratt.
Hiram gives Jeremiah a lot of latitude, as the ghoul has shown himself more than competent.
Perhaps more importantly, Hiram has little interest in micromanaging others, and while he tends to sect and pack affairs, he remains as much as loner as he was in life. From the 1950s through the 1970s, Hiram remained a fixture in some unremarkable Tzimisce-dominated packs. In the 1980s, he learned about advancements in video recording, and he began to film his ritual murders and sharing the footage, with packmates at first and later other Sabbat vampires.
Eventually, these snuff films ended up in mortal hands, causing a minor media panic. Hiram again faced destruction due to his psychopathic proclivities and poor judgement. This time, he definitely would have greeted the next sunrise had it not been for the intervention of the Pearl.
The Final Death of a promising artist would be a waste, and so deals were made and favors called in. Hiram joined the The Theater of the Uncanny and has been a member since. He still makes his movies, although he does not distribute them himself; instead, the Pearl has Vincent share the scenes covertly with a list of clients who pay exorbitant rates.
These nights, Hiram spends most of his time in Miami, only visiting the Okeechobee area
infrequently, to work on his special creatures, several of which are prototypes. Usually he is preparing for his next abduction and killing. He has developed a pattern of stalking young adolescent white women, learning their routines, before executing his kidnappings, with contingencies included. He then takes them to a secondary location, usually a remote shed or empty house, and tortures them for a digital camera. This torture varies: sometimes Hiram rends his victim apart with his fangs, and other times he feeds them alive to warped dogs or crocodiles. Fear of getting caught again gnaws at him, so he always destroys the bodies as completely as he can.
Usually this means offal for the animals, but lately Hiram has started to eat the flesh as well.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Hiram Henry Bratt is a tall, stocky white man with a thick neck and broad shoulders. His arms and hands are meaty and muscular. His head is slightly too big for his body, and his beady eyes are a little too close together. He wears simple, often worn and stained clothing, unfashionable items that would go unpicked at thrift stores. He is usually unnervingly quiet and expressionless, but when he does speak, it is forceful and through gritted teeth.
Character Breakdown
- Sire: Solomon Firestone
- Nature: Deviant
- Demeanor: Loner
- Generation: 11th
- Willpower: 6
- Morality: Humanity 3
Species
Year of Death
1956
Children
Aligned Organization
Other Affiliations
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