It was never decreed that a god mustn't pay hotel bills!

-Bertolt Brecht, The Good Woman of Setzuan

In 2003 Harrison Whyte, leader of the Invictus and Regent of Chicago's Northwest Regency, disappeared in fire at his residence. His aide-de-camp, Elam C. Featherby, was his heir-apparent successor to both positions. Featherby has been known publicly for his grandiloquent expression, his mouthing of platitudes, and his greasy palms.

Featherby was absorbed into the Invictus in the early 1880's. He was known to be a Kindred somewhere before the turn of the century. A prominent entrepreneur in the hospitality business, the majority of his holdings were fronts in one sense or another for illicit activities: vice, bootlegging, narcotics, and gambling. A conspicuous amount of his properties have been consumed in conflagrations over the years, typically attributed to myriad safety and maintenance code violations.

E.C. Featherby has gone out of his way to become known to his peers. He has operated a private lounge for the benefit of vampires in some form since 1905, excepting a temporary interlude in the twenties resulting from his mysterious absence from the city after his lounge was immolated. (see The CWC website, stories section, "The End of Big Jim Colosimo") Historically Featherby has been one the few merchants which furnish the city with lacrimose, an alcoholic blood-based beverage. He provides Degoutante, his brand of this draught, gratis at his lounge, which is presently the top floor of the louse-ridden Commodore Hotel. Featherby is accessible at his lounge most nights of the year for Happy Hour, a tradition he has maintained for decades.

Featherby's tenure as Regent has been nothing if not rocky; hardly a month can be expected to pass without Featherby drawing threats from Ursos Arctos, or verbal sparring well below his station. In July of two-thousand-six, Featherby announced his intention to claim Praxis on the sixteenth of the following month. The claim had the support of Carthian Prefect Ursos Arctos. The central issues of the claim were that Prince Farragut was in all practical senses gone and that the city would be better served with a tangible prince, and that he would improve city feeding grounds. However, the veracity of his claim was impugned when Farragut publicly returned on the first of the following September. Featherby and Ursos maintained the Praxis for a week or so, until a ‘tripartite deal’ was hammered out between Farragut, the Carthian Movement, and himself. The results of the deal named Ursos Arctos the prince's hound, Alex Crane the prince's Harpy, and Featherby one of his new Primogen.

Featherby has been caught violating the tradition of Elysium; violating it in one instance by dropping a car through the elevator shaft of the Civic Opera House. In a more recent incident he admitted to arranging the destruction of the Holy Cross Church in Champaign-Urbana, a known Elysium. For that offense, he was removed as a Primogen of Chicago, then flogged and publicly shamed in Champaign.

The Primogen system established in the ‘tripartite deal’ required two primogen seats be elected from the public. Featherby had a hand in 'overseeing' the first election: he replaced the ballot box with a used Portillo's bag. The bag disappeared several times, and a brawl ensued when EC attempted to remove the bag, and votes, from the election site. The Regent was not an official for the second election, held at Drayne Brewery. Nonetheless, he later claimed responsibility for sabotaging equipment at the brewery which inspired a retreat from the polling place. This allowed Featherby an opportunity to tamper with the ballot box.

He disappeared to LA for a period in November to secure the US Olympic bid for Chicago. In January the Oriental Arms hotel was razed. Featherby survived; 63 people, many of them college students attending a fraternity party, perished. At present he is managing the construction of the new Sanctified church in Englewood (Eisenman’s Church of the Year 2000), directly across from the Cybele Spa. He groaningly admits responsibility for the Chicago Aerospace Commission. Around March, Featherby started proclaiming that he was the Priscus of the Nosferatu, and this time with some consensus from clanmates.

Elam Cusuina Featherby: Invictus, Nosferatu Priscus.