Name: Eva
Age: 300+ (Appears late 20s.)
Clan: Toreador
Generation: 5th through diablerie.
Title: Officially none. Unofficially ruler of the Free States.
Biography:
A descendant of the lost Mayan tribes, daughter to a tribal shaman father who dabbled in tranditional magic and healing arts. Eva has never gone into detail about what happened, but to those closest to her she has mentioned that she watched her childhood home burn as the sun set on her childhood. It wasn't long after that the Spanish took her from a field of fruit trees. They demanded navigation and translation, to say nothing of what else men demand of young women. But after her family's demise in shadow and fire, the child Eva was at the time just could do nothing else but play along with the Spanish.
By the time she snapped out of it, she was on a ship at sea. Eva rallied others taken from the lands around her home, and eventually they escaped even as the Spanish ship burnt and sank. The details of the story remain fuzzy to her, but she remembers being the only one to make it to land. She remembers watching three others she escaped with drown in the black warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. She wound up on what would become Galveston Island, where she stayed at a local coastal fort of earth and timber. The men were little kinder there than the Spanish had been, and Eva moved on quickly.
Eva falls in with several local tribes, and it's through them she learns of other Spanish moving through the territory only but a year after leaving Galveston Island, headed North. The Spanish are shocked to meet a woman who can speak local tongues, foreign tongues, and enough of their own Spanish to understand. Though the Spanish notes that the "native woman" was initially shy and hesitant, she presented a unique boon to ther expedition, and the leaders of the Portola expedition decided they were better off with her. After swearing that no one would be allowed to hurt her, Eva began her role as the go-between for the Spanish with the natives they encountered on their way to California.
In California Eva has a direct hand in establishing Spanish mission communities all over southern California, but most notably San Diego and Los Angeles. This fact plays an immense role in Eva's control over the Free States, as her influence can literally be traced back to the origins of many cities. Her first meeting with the Kindred of the area was a trick of fate, more than a planned and plotted event. She was traveling with a Spanish friar when a wind storm forced them to the nearest settlement: the rancho of Don Sebastian Juan Dominguez, unaware of 5th Generation Toreador on the run Christopher Houghton.
As was his custom, Houghton would develop a crush. Both from Eva's power of presence and personality, from her charm, but of the stories she told--of her escape, of her survival, of her helping the Spanish to setup so much of California already. As the night went long the two talked of what could be made of the valleys they overlooked in moonlight now. Of what could be; it was there, that night, that the original idea of Los Angeles was conceived. Before the sun rose, Houghton embraced Eva, convinced she was his missing piece. While others close to Christopher would come and go, Eva would stay with him, the mother figure he never had, and never had to fear.
Los Angeles grew into a major city, and before long the Kindred duo were looking for other outlets. Neither is sure who was first, Christopher or Eva, but they both agree that once the other introduced them to motion pictures...that was it. They had found their new calling. Los Angeles and it's surrounding areas they would leave to lieutenants and mortal pawns, stepping in when needed, but from then on the majority of their attention was on this new artform. It was on "Hollywoodland"--or Hollywood, as Eva famously shortened it one evening. What followed was the Golden Age of Hollywood.
In the mid-1900s the Anarchs came. Christopher fell for some of the Anarchs, had soured on his childe, the Camarilla Prince Don Sebastian. So the Don fell, and the Anarchs set up a Free State--completely unaware of the Kindred powers that were already supporting them from the shadows. Of a sort, anyway; quite frankly at the time Eva didn't care. The Anarchs, the Free State? That nonsense belonged to Christopher, as far as Eva was concerned. Where he became distracted from Hollywood, Eva only doubled her efforts, becoming hyperactive in her involvement with the day to day, and long term, operations of Hollywood. Her only distraction was in the early 70s--and that was thanks to the exploding porn film industry in Van Nuys, well within her LA domain.
Eventually Christopher's paranoia and aggression got the better of him. When Los Angeles turned to war after lupine and kindred alike went after Don Sebastian, Christopher came dangerously close to exposing himself--and by extension Eva. It created the first squabble between the two since the earliest days of Hollywood. Instead of heal and move on, the divisions only deepened. After the incident elder Kindred in LA began to die, and a new series of violence errupted. This time Christopher went public, and declared himself Baron of Los Angeles.
It was betrayal and violation to Eva. Their secrecy was their bond, and he had finally violated it due to no reason other than his own paranoia and madness. When Christopher attacked her own Coterie and friends, Eva was forced to act. The Kindred Civil War of the Free States began, and ended only when Eva diablerized Christopher Houghton. Famous for her own humanity despite all her long years as a Kindred, Eva quickly descended to torpor as a means to preserve herself as much as possible after diablerie. In her place she left Los Angeles, and the Free States, into the hands of her Coterie. There Henry and Yanci were given their current roles, and Eva slipped into sleep.
Most believe Eva has passed a threshold of power in the Kindred community: that now she is truly the elder, and influencing the nights of the Free States even from her resting state.
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