Name: Joachim Ariel Guerrero y Camardan, MD
Craft Name:Ignacio de Carcosa, bani Flambeau
Shadow Name: Joachim Ariel Ignacio Guerrero y Camardan de Carcosa,bani Flambeau - Diez y Trés, Dancer through the Abyss, and Conduit of the Inner Voice
Word: Duende
Rank: Fourth Degree (Initiate)

Echoes: Joachim's shadow stands out in sharper relief than average - even in dim light.

All things, to give light, must endure burning
-Goethe

Son of a bullfighter and flamenco singer from Granada, Spain, Joachim's family struggled after his father's death in the ring. After a stint in the Spanish Army, he attended medical school at the University of Madrid and returned home to Andalucia after graduation. Unable to secure a residency in his hometown, he relocated south to the coastal town of Tarifa, answering a call from a cruise ship company needing medical personnel for their luxury tours. It was only later that he learned there was a darker truth.

The company was a front owned by an elder Lasombra vampire, Marcos Luevano. The nominal Bishop of Gibralter, Luevano's long-standing affinity with the surrounding ocean had him promoting interests in several seafaring endeavours - from tour cruises to shipping and piracy. Although largely unconcerned with the majority of the mortals in his employ, ruling his empire with a web of his own blood and progency, there was something in the young doctor the Cainite found compelling.

Compelling enough to reveal himself and force-feed Joachim his blood. After he'd been sufficiently broken to be a good servant, Marcos sent him among his less-than-legal enterprises. Pulling bullets out of raiders who travelled the East African coast - and eventually, participating in no few raids himself

Joachim does not speak of his years of vampiric bondage directly, preferring to leave it a part of his shadowed past - especially with the recent wake of the Second Massasa War and House Tytalus' vampiric infestation. His escape from slavery was arduous; his will becoming gradually less pliant to Luevano's mind-control combined with distance from his Domitor on a raid in the West Indes allowed him to jump ship and swim for shore

As he was sinking into the black water, as impermeable as the tangible darkness his domitor could summon on command, something shifted in Joachim's perceptions. With the remnants of vampiric vitae burning in his veins, he reached out to that selfsame darkness to shield him from detection

And the darkness answered. And he passed through it to his freedom.

He first came upon the Order of Hermes in Belize, after barely managing to shake off the lingering effects of Marcus' Blood Bond. Taken under the wing of a Flambeau magus who sensed some roiling potential, Joachim's apprenticeship was arduous and frustrating. Occaisionally, he seemed to grasp the fundamentals of magia by the reins, but something in his indomintable spirit of previous affliction would not let him pass through to permanent, full Awakening. Finally, one evening, he broke into his pater's Sanctum and demanded to be given the Apprentice's Gauntlet

And soared through the Trials of Forces with an ease that never came in the rest of his studies. Since moving beying the apprentice's degrees, he has yet to display a similar feat.