Bishop Alrich

Bishop Alrich is a vampire who entered the Checquy’s service after a prolonged conflict between the organization and vampires, becoming both a senior official and a reminder that the Checquy’s alliances do not erase the dangers they contain. His charm and long tenure make him familiar to colleagues, but the text emphasizes that neither familiarity nor formal membership makes him safe: he remains a predator whose abilities and motives are difficult for the organization to govern.

Identity and Entrance into the Checquy

Alrich is identified as a vampire and a Bishop of the Checquy. His position has an unusual history: he was once on the opposing side, and his admission followed a thirty-three-day campaign in which seventy-two Checquy members died. At the end of the fighting, the Lord and Lady woke in a fortified bunker to find their bodyguards mesmerized into comas and the vampire Heller before them. Heller introduced himself as the parent vampire and explained that his younger spawn, Alrich, had grown impressed with the Checquy while learning about its reach and purpose. Alrich had also become enamored with the organization, and Heller asked whether its leaders would take him into their service for a time.

The proposal turned an enemy into an employee without undoing the history that made the arrangement dangerous. The Checquy leadership accepted a vampire whose recent association with the deaths of its members was inseparable from his new place among them. The account presents his recruitment not as a clean reconciliation but as a striking change of direction that surprised the Lord and Lady themselves.

Presence and Conduct

Alrich’s appearance makes his inhumanity visible even when he is behaving with courtly restraint. At the dragon hatching, he arrived in falling snow dressed in thin black silk. He left no footprints and gave off no visible breath, while his hair shimmered with a blood-red appearance. The sight unsettled the people waiting to receive him; nevertheless, he offered his arm to Myfanwy, who accepted it, and entered the pavilion as a guest among the senior witnesses.

At a later Checquy reception, his clothing made him one of the most striking figures in the room. He wore a long black-silk kimono embroidered with deep metallic crimson, with large vanes rising from his shoulders and auburn hair plaited down his back. He met Myfanwy’s gaze and smiled as he surveyed her outfit, his approval apparent in the widening smile. The scene sets his controlled social manner against an appearance that resists ordinary categories: he can participate in the rituals of a formal gathering while remaining conspicuously unlike the humans around him.

That composed presence does not mean passivity. When attackers overwhelmed the reception, Alrich emerged from the crowd and moved into the fighting. His kimono was torn, and he advanced with his hands set to strike. The contrast with his polished appearance at the gathering is sharp: the courtly Bishop becomes an active combatant when the Checquy is under attack.

Relationship with Myfanwy

Alrich’s encounters with Myfanwy repeatedly place courtesy beside uncertainty. During the preparations for the dragon’s hatching, she welcomes him despite her apprehension, and he responds with a small smile and an offered arm. At the reception, he again acknowledges her with a smile, this time while taking in her elaborate dress. These moments establish a social ease between them, but they do not establish that she can safely trust him.

That uncertainty becomes explicit when Myfanwy encounters him at a club on her night off. She has been using her powers to direct the movement of dancers, then loses control of the crowd’s movement and stumbles into Alrich. She fears that he may be the traitor in the Court and may have followed her there to kill her. At the same time, she is angry that he has appeared during her rare time away from work. The second reaction overtakes the first, and she protests rather than treating him as an immediate threat. Alrich offers to buy her a drink; she agrees, asking for something weak because she has discovered that she does not tolerate alcohol well.

The exchange ends with an explicit reminder of the risk beneath the social encounter: Alrich is a vampire. Myfanwy is warned against displaying holy symbols at Court meetings, both because they would not work and because doing so would be poor manners. The warning turns a familiar supernatural convention into a point of irony: the threat is real, but the expected defense is useless.

Power, Suspicion, and Limits

Within the Checquy, Alrich is regarded with a mixture of fear, pride, and matter-of-fact acceptance. Some members know that he was formerly an enemy, but his long service has made him seem almost institutional: he is described as having been there longer than almost anyone. Newcomers may be unsettled by his inhumanity; established colleagues can treat overlooking it as a point of pride. The organization’s acceptance is therefore both practical and uneasy. Alrich belongs, but his difference remains visible beneath the habit of treating him as one of the team.

His charm can obscure the fact that he preys on human beings. He does not necessarily need to kill those he feeds on, and his ability to mesmerize victims can leave them unaware of what has happened. The account raises, without resolving, a troubling possibility about his staff: people working under him tend to die younger than expected, and his section has a higher rate of sick leave than any other part of the Checquy. These patterns prompt the suspicion that he may be feeding on employees or altering their memories. Neither possibility is confirmed, but the prospect of a formal inquiry is itself described as dangerous for the organization.

Alrich’s standing in the Court has a firm ceiling. He is not expected to rise above Bishop, and it is unclear whether he resents that limitation. The Court also cannot confidently assess whether his service reflects lasting commitment or a temporary apprenticeship that he might eventually leave. His priorities remain alien to his human colleagues, so his loyalty is treated as an open question rather than an established certainty.

Narrative Significance

Alrich embodies the Checquy’s habit of accommodating the very dangers it is meant to contain. His history as an enemy and his service as a Bishop coexist; his colleagues can feel pride in having him while remaining wary of what he is. The institution’s familiarity with him is not proof that it understands or controls him.

The balance of power makes that uncertainty consequential. Alrich combines physical strength, speed, mental influence, cunning, and authority within the organization. If he became an enemy, he could overpower individuals, prevent them from acting, and obstruct their efforts to gather support. His position means the threat would not come only from his supernatural abilities: it would also come from the institutional standing that decades of service have given him. The character’s central tension is therefore not simply that a vampire works among humans, but that the Checquy’s dependence on his service leaves it exposed to a danger it cannot confidently measure.