Born far from the Capital in a place within Kindeance that could best be described as "that idyllic village with some farmer", Veronica was an average human daughter to a peasant hunter... aside from a slight hiccup. Born under a good omen, she was blessed with an innate magical gift for "reading fate", a Seer who might one day have been found and trained to be the mystical advisor of this or that hero, guiding them on the path to a glorious destiny. However, as fate would have it, a True Vampire, one Lord Blackwater, who had long-since set down roots after hailing from a land outside Kindeance, unfortunately heard tell of her and sought to turn her as a subordinate to use her gift for himself. The girl, otherwise defenseless aside from her capacity to see her near future, was captured and a year thereafter turned into a similar creature of darkness, lesser and mystically bound by her hated "master's" bond as her Sire.

Over the two years since her abduction, she was trained in the arts of ninjutsu and magic. she had no choice but to be honed into a weapon and tool for her "master", made an unwilling killer and her magic refined further for the sake of making her a more useful tool for foreseeing misfortune and spying upon the Vampire Lord's enemies... when she wasn't used to murder them outright. Unfortunately for him, training her resulted in the resentful little vampire awakening a second aspect of her gift, one that allowed her to avoid the destiny that she could prior only despair at. Through this, she was able to slip the master bond of her Sire and catch him unawares. Caught off guard, the Vampire Lord was torn limb from limb, and in drinking his blood, Veronica fully became a Vampire Lord like her Sire and shattered whatever might have remained of their bond.

Come the morning, her tormenter's remains were reduced to ashes by the sun, and Veronica once more breathed the sweet air of freedom... Though it was tainted by the bitterness of her new "condition" as a Vampire Lord -if a young one, and she was unsure what to do with herself. Despite bloodied hands and a darkened spirit, she hadn't been under her Sire's yoke long enough to taint her morality irrevocably. She was still herself, and she had no intention of being the monster the next hero would slay.

With that determination made, for the safety of innocent lives, she reluctantly made a home in her Sire's former lair and left primarily only to get sustenance, once more taking up a hunter job of her human family in order to have an at least legitimate supply of blood to drink. In such a way, delivering "pre-drained" cadavers to local butchers of nearby towns and villages, she made a simple living on simple coin... along with whatever her Sire's coffers contained. Her "condition" was one she mostly tried to conceal, but in the end, the King had his ways. Long story short, a year after regaining her freedom, at age 20, she was found out, but the fact that she had stayed a "productive member of society" and wasn't going around murdering people unprovoked and generally being a megalomaniac stayed the hands of potential hunting parties. The fact that it was eventually discovered that she had slain the Vampire Lord before her added another element of potential trustworthiness to her, and so, she was approached as a potential agent of the King to be given a chance to truly prove her loyalty and good will to the kingdom.

As such, for the next half decade, Veronica would find herself occasionally acting on behalf of "favors" from the Crown, working as an espionage agent, Seer, and sometimes soldier and scout for the Guard. Collaborations with Matilda, the Head of the Guard, weren't common, but they weren't uncommon either. Over the course of 5 years, the two developed a basic working relationship. They may not necessarily trust each other, but they don't specifically mistrust each-other either. And Veronica would be inclined to trust her back to the orc warrior.

Over the years, Veronica came to be less resentful of her "condition", and with the tentative faith afforded to her by the kingdom, she has come to redevelop a sense of confidence and acceptance. Nowadays, her "condition" is just another part of life... one she expects will be very long, so she has chosen not to wallow in self-pity and depression. Her once concealing garb has been exchanged for borderline proud eccentricity. While she does not explicitly advertise her "condition", she is no longer shamed by or afraid of it. She is a Vampire in the King's Court, who has earned her place through good will, and she'll not let any tell her otherwise.

Four months ago, due to the seriousness of the kingdom's crisis and the desperation involved, Veronica would find herself requisitioned as an investigator, using her divinations to aid in tracking the Prince's kidnappers with the Guard while the main black ops team was off performing their own tasks. It is because her typical place of residence is a quite a fair distance from the Capitol that she was unable to be reached in time to join up with the main team initially. Regardless, she would eventually conclude her own investigation and move to join the primary team, going on to help locate the Prince's likely locations with her scrying magic.

In the aftermath of a successful retrieval mission and the averting of a national crisis, Veronica used the generous reward given to her by the King (along with a supplement of some of the riches left in her former Master's coffers) to officially purchase the castle and land she had been technically squatting on all that time, only not challenged on it presumably out of good will or concerns about angering the presently friendly vampire. Now that her Sire's former domain was hers in truth, with her i's dotted and t's finally crossed legally and socially, Veronica set about taking steps to making her new lands hospitable, making plans for a vineyard and wine enterprise. Contracting Cedar, the druidic bear of her past team, she was able to have her business functional inside weeks, rather than the months it could have taken, and made overtures to Jazdia Crystalspark about selling her new wares at the elf's restaurant, the Angel's Share.

Four months later, however, she was hearing tell of misfortune that had suddenly befallen Jazdia's business, something that her profit margins from that direction had already warned of. She hadn't wanted to believe it, but the numbers didn't lie. And until the most recent summons from the Crown, she had largely remained in her new lands, doing her best to stabilize and prepare her new holdings, as word of political tensions and cries for war drifted in from Rascade. As soon as she could arrange for her absence to be done without, Veronica departed for the Capital, determined to do her part to once more hopefully maintain peace in Kindeance.

Talants:
Ninjutsu: She has been harshly trained in this collection of fundamental survivalist and espionage techniques, among which are: methods of gathering information and techniques of non-detection, avoidance and misdirection, along with disguise, escape and concealment. She's no stranger to picking locks or disabling traps either. This is the root of her shinobi teachings, one in which she has attained mastery status or near enough to it. Heavy focus. While medicine and archery are also parts of these techniques, she favors them lesser.
Medicine: Her capacity for medical techniques tends towards "field surgery" and making sure injuries aren't immediately lethal. Setting bones. Popping dislocated joints back in. Applying splints, stitches, bandages and salves. She knows where to stab to kill fastest, so she has a pretty good idea how to be more careful when treating certain afflictions. She's not a biology guru or proper doctor; that's for certain. She's just got a good head for improvisation.
Archery: She's a decent shot, but she prefers unaware or otherwise stationary targets. She compensates with her magic to predict her targets' movements for more difficult shots.
Taijutsu: For those times she is trapped in prolonged CQC, she's adequate in the art of unarmed -or lightly armed- combat. Unarmed combat isn't her favorite, but she's not going to get steamrolled. Prefers to disengage and arm herself.
Shurikenjutsu: She is excellent in the art of handling small, bladed weapons, both in CQC and as throwing weapons. This is her preferred fighting style. Fighting fair is for chumps.
Sojutsu/Bojutsu: The art of wielding polearms. Particularly, Veronica favors the spear and scythe. Novice but unconventional. Her most inexperienced but also intuitive martial art and her "passion project". Technically, she's got the basics down pat, but her focus was never open combat under her Sire. That is something she became more familiar with working with the Royal Guard. In other words, she's mostly self-taught, so she tends to fight unconventionally in this art.
Lip Reading: In the course of spying and assassination, she has developed the capacity to roughly read speech from afar.
Parkour: Her vampiric strength makes her an able and acrobatic navigator of unconventional terrain, very useful for infiltration.
Hunter: Her family trade, she is a respectable hand at tracking, trapping and skinning prey, along with camping in the wilds.
Peasant Roots: Knowledgeable in the basics of various "womanly" tasks like cleaning, cooking and sewing.
Rulership: While she had some basic experience in matters of leading under her Sire's tutelage prior, it's only after officially acquiring legal land and hiring people to tend to it that she's put her theoretical knowledge into practice, giving her a greater air of confidence and command when needs must. Once living long in the shadows, she can now project proper authority and charisma.

True Vampire/Vampire Lord:
Darkvision: Even in pitch black, she can perceive the world in shades of grey. Though even this eyesight cuts off into murk past a certain point. Her long-range vision is otherwise very keen under proper lighting.
Inhuman Physicality: Undeath has removed the normal limits on human musculature, giving her the capacity for peak human levels of physical feats. However, her muscles will still tear from exerting themselves to their fullest capacity, requiring she only do so in bursts and wait a brief while for them to heal. As long as she doesn't push too hard, she can still operate at normal human levels during the wait. While her body isn't exactly any more durable than a human's, she doesn't feel pain as more than an irritant, and most wounds are not lethal, only disabling.
Healing Factor: Her wounds regenerate quickly. Not enough to be all that useful in battle, but outside battle, an hour's rest will mend most wounds, and a night's rest can restore her body entirely, even the loss of her head. Due to the constant nature of the regeneration, she is unable to reattach fully severed body parts. Her regeneration either starts with her mostly intact head or her body if the former is unavailable. Large-scale regeneration rapidly accelerates her bloodthirst's progression.
Undeath: She is unaffected by poison, disease, exhaustion or age.
Thirst: She doesn't need to eat, sleep or breathe, though she still requires some blood to sate her thirst. While as an undead, she technically doesn't need sustenance, much of her vampiric strengths will become less prominent with prolonged abstinence. In addition, much as any hungry creature, she is prone to increasingly large spurts of irritation and bloodlust until sated. She can subsist off animal blood, but sentient blood is far more fulfilling. She can also consume mundane foods, but they give her no nutrition.
Predator: Her presence is generally disliked by creatures without sentience, wildlife naturally perceiving her as a predator, so she is generally unable to handle mundane animals (especially of the "prey" variety) without them going into fight of flight mode, regardless of her intent. They will tolerate her presence enough that she could ride in a cart pulled by horses, but riding horseback would take a beast with nerves of steel, like a veteran warhorse.
Unreflected: She has no reflection, whether it be a mirror, body of water or any other surface.
Sunlight Vulnerability: Though more resistant than a lesser vampire, sunlight is still her bane, burning badly but not lethally unless she remains in prolonged contact. Chop her to pieces and leave her exposed to daylight, and the sun will do the rest in about an hour.
Holy Vulnerability: Certain "holy" or otherwise "sanctified" magics have the capacity to be a special bother to her as an undead.
Averted Weaknesses: As a Vampire Lord, she no longer suffers from some of the weaknesses a typical lesser vampire exhibits. Running water no longer hinders her, and she doesn't need to be invited to cross a threshold of a residence. Wooden stakes are as any other weapon, even if getting stabbed in the heart would still be pretty annoying, for the splinters if nothing else.
Siring: Vampire "reproduction" is fairly simple. While their undead bodies preclude them from being fertile, they can convert other living beings to more of their kind with a transfusion of their blood to a creature that has been drained dry of their own. The recipient will rise a day later as a lesser vampire fledgling, mystically subordinate to their Sire and unable to disobey direct commands. A fledgling that is granted the opportunity to consume a notable quantity of their Sire's blood again will be freed of the bond and become a True Vampire, otherwise known as a Vampire Lord, but only if their Sire was a Vampire Lord themselves. Lesser Vampires can create fledglings, but if the Sire does not become a True Vampire, their fledgling will be left precluded from being able to become a Vampire Lord as well for as long as that state persists.

Born a Seer when she was human, Veronica's magic revolves around divination, the capacity to view the past, present and future in order to gather information.

Sight of the Fated: Shows her the near future up to five seconds. Allows her to "simulate" her immediate future possibilities without committing to them until she finds one she likes. (eg. she can plan to leap through a window, and she will witness what would occur if she did/who or what is on the other side) She particularly favors using this with her archery. However, the present is always moving at least a little, and she can only make scry attempts so fast. She only has so much time in a given moment to make "guesses" and act on one before the "baseline" of her visions changes. And then she has to put up with the result. If she's facing an aware and skilled opponent, this can be particularly troublesome, especially if she has to waste time using her predictions to avoid attacks on herself rather than returning the favor.

Avert the Destined: Allows her to slip out of "phase" with the interference of the natural course of "destiny". When she enters this state, she becomes imperceptible and intangible to forces of direct mystical origin, shedding any hostile afflictions that currently linger upon her, like curses or bindings. A magical explosion and its immediate integral collateral (shockwave, small debris and such) would wash over her harmlessly, but a thrown steel beam would still ruin her day if not dodged. Divination can't see or target her. She treats magical shields and wards like they don't exist, and the barriers won't even register the intrusion. On the inverse, this separation with the mystical means she cannot affect the world with her other magic in turn until she reverts this state. This spell covers more obscure mystical phenomenon, including the "purifying" effect of the sun's rays on vampires, allowing her to be a "daywalker". (eg. this is what slipped her from her Sire's leash)

The Gift Known as the Present: Allows her to scry distant places and events that are occurring immediately in the now. The further she wants to reach and the more senses she wants to use at the targeted location at once, the more intensive the effort required, so she usually only uses sight and sound. Can be used either for short range strategic glimpses in combat, or ritualistically for spying on distant events. She can target specific individuals, but only if she knows what they look like or otherwise has some manner of catalyst related to them. She can scry any location she has seen personally, as visualization is important to the spell. Though, notably, she can expand the number of "starting points" available to her by panning her vision around a targeted location, her scrying gaze sufficient for the purposes of "marking" new places and people as "seen".

What Has Come Before: Through focused, meditative delving, allows her to wind back the clock of her vision and perceive past events that occurred in a radius of roughly 30 feet from her position. She can wind the clock forward as well, accelerating the "replay" to skip less interesting/relevant material. She can maintain this spell on the move and track events of the past up to the present as fast as she can manage to physically keep up with them. That said, she can only peer back as far as three days, so haste in reaching the "scene of the crime" is still a priority to ensure trails do not go cold.

General:
Medium-Sized Brown Backpack: Compact and simple to don and doff.
Change of clothes: Includes favored garb, a brown cloak, and practical full-body coverage wear for sun protection/stealth.
Mundane Rations: Dry foods like jerky, dried fruit and nuts. (Sometimes used to help conceal her "condition".)
Blood Rations: Several thick waterskins with blood of varying types in them (usually animal). A sip every meal period is typically enough to keep her topped off at peak performance.
Scentless Soap: A standard cleanliness measure ground into her to aid non-detection. Applied whenever bathing.
Coin Pouch: A padded, sectioned pouch, made to silence the jingle of coin.

Armament:
Light Armor: Primarily leather over vitals, but some metal on forearms, elbows, knees, lower shins, upper sternum & shoulders.
Sharpened Sai Daggers: Typically a defensive weapon, when weaponized, they make an excellent tool for liberating a victim of their eye sockets' contents, along with scrambling the brain behind them. Veronica uses them like deadly nails, punching precise holes in her foes' vitals.
Throwing Knives: Not particularly deadly unless aimed well, they still make decent distractions if aimed for the face or neck. Passable for melee combat in a pinch. Far more threatening if coated with poison.
Seijaku/Silence - Composite Recurve Shortbow: A bow type useful for firing while mobile. (stored in a leather waterproof case)
Quiver: 30 arrow capacity. (30/30) Strapped to small of her back. Barbed & non-barbed arrows.
Chigetsu/Blood Moon - War Scythe: Bathed in the blood of many lives over the decades, a strange, crimson polearm once belonging to her Sire. One end is mounted with a spearhead and the other with a scythe-head that is bladed on both edges, oriented oddly like a farming tool, rather than a typical war scythe. Normally, this weapon would be rather impractical, but it comes into its own wielded by a vampire's physicality. The scythe has the magical property to shrink down to the size of a sickle for discreet transport or return to normal (takes 5 seconds in either direction). The enchanted weapon's longevity is the result of the property of blood absorption, slowly but surely repairing itself with any sanguine essence that lingers upon its surface.

Miscellaneous/Tools:
Tinderbox: Contains flint, fire steel, and dry cloth soaked in oil.
Infiltration Kit: Includes a small file, lock picks, a small mirror mounted on a metal handle, a set of narrow-bladed scissors and pliers.
Kaginawa/Grappling Hook & Rope: A sturdy, steel hook and a compact bundle of thin but very sturdy and long rope.
Weapon Maintenance Kit: Includes a whetstone, rags, specialized oils, and spare bowstrings.
Medic Kit: Contains bandages, gauze pads, splints, basic salves, alcohol, needles, thread, syrettes, scalpels, whiskey & biting stick.
Pocket Watch: A well-maintained silver-cased device that once belonged to her Sire, it has been quite useful for tracking the sun.
Compass: In good condition. Points north.
Leatherbound Logbook: A coded log of information gathered during investigations. Pencils included.
Maps: A small, leather-bound book. The contents are of a variety of maps of the kingdoms, particularly Kindeance. Also a variety of far more quality, larger maps kept rolled up separately. All maps are kept within a rubber-lined, waterproof case, for preservation.

Blackwater Castle: Located near the mountain range to the west of the eastern pass leading to Tretagor, this large, imposing mansion is made of an outward layer of stone and carries a serious gothic aesthetic, as one might perhaps expect to be culturally appropriate to a place once -and now currently- owned by a Vampire Lord. The surrounding lands are presently inhabited by a smattering of peasants and enterprising individuals, who have either been hired or given leave to settle on the land. Ownership of these lands provide her, amongst other things: her Sire's coffers and mysterious vaults that she hasn't dug through much, basic manpower and a boost to her reputation and social/legal standing.

Ruby Dreams: A business Veronica has recently started up, built around the vineyards she has had grown on her land. The produce of the orchards (primarily grapes) is used for both regular fruit products and wine making. The business's first market contact was the Angel's Share; though, they have slowly spread their wares into the immediate surrounding lands, partially out of necessity, due to the recent spate of poor business the Angel's Share has received. Provides a (currently small) steady source of income, as they are turning a profit.