1. Bondage Armor: Mostly a stylistic choice. Ligiea's take on 'I could beat you with my arms tied behind my back' 2. Aside from pecking she's sure to unleash volleys of kicks, knees, leg locks and shoulder take-downs. More to the point however, that helm of hers is attached to a full sized sword... 3. Not really the sort of aspect I had in mind when hoping for something to work in tandem with her inventions but I can work with it. I wouldn't have left it blank if I didn't want to be surprised.
One last thing though--and I don't really want to be that person--but I feel it needs to be said. I'm not a fan of the many spelling and grammar errors to be found in Geoffrey's rather short CS. By all means it's your roleplay and your decision and I might be the only one bothered by it. That said I'd rather back out early if that's where you set the bar for applicants, even if some (like cleric beast and yourself) exceed the standard. Wouldn't want to spoil the fun for others or drop out mid chapter.
Athletic to say the least Ligeia's pleasingly muscular figure slopes from an unobtrusive bust into belled hips and a pair of plump, powerful thighs; aggressively feminine. Her chiseled form conjures to mind the warrior women of mural and myth more than the carefully cultivated beauty of Penumbra's waifish socialites, mired dually in as much threat as allure. When paired with her maverick demeanor it's nearly enough for one to overlook the jarring absence of either hand.
Her face flows in broad strokes; sly, sleepy eyes nestled beneath a bantam brow like flecks of sard. Full cheeks tapering into the sort of jaw you could really tee off on and a chin that was made to be upturned. Like a wax seal her small, scornful little smirk of a mouth pulls everything together, silently assuring the world of her superiority.
A tidy crop of dark curls survives the scalp revealing trim that mows its way down into a very utilitarian cross braid a stone's throw away from being a 'hawk'. In the end she's left with a prim, all-weather cut just full bodied enough to fit a few fingers through.
Her voice is pure audio sex, a soporific melody that could make good morning sound like an invitation to bed.
Ruthless to a fault Ligeia sees her wits and wiles as little more than ready tools to be added to her repertoire, the sort of woman that spreads her legs with all the compassion of a bear trap. Often with the same result. In her mind she is the better woman. The better hunter. Much of her life spent accruing the needed skills to keep this image free from contention and eradicating worthy rivals.
The aplomb with which she greets life's hardships is itself an exercise in self-indulgence, her vanity obliging her more than any actual mettle or content of character. A gourmand when it comes to worldly pleasures, she lives to be pampered, praised and adored as much as she aches to be feared and reviled. Loving nothing save herself the triumphs and tribulations of all others are met with either spite or indifference.
Enamored with the idea of molding her own heir Ligeia has proved a poor mother, adoptive or otherwise. Her long list of proteges all having met suspiciously grisly fates as they inevitably fell from their mentor's good graces.
Life assaulted the frail form pulled forth wet and wailing from its mother, another of Lord Siccar's bastard children; the fragile infant's fledgling senses groping for purchase as that first breath sputter's and fails. Like the tide drawn out before a tsunami that chilling sight flensed the once jubilant assemblage of color before the sudden crash of shouts and commotion flooded the bedchamber. In frantic delirium the mother whimpers hoarsely for her baby, hurried hands rushing to restrain her even as other work away the umbilical noosed around its throat. It's far too late for her, the leaden ache of a collapsed lung all that she will ever know; already cooling on the bedsheets.
"I'm sorry." the midwife began, silenced not by the mournful mother but instead the tiny sound that had usurped everyone's attention. Laughter. For in all the calamity the mistress had born twins and a giggling newborn girl now greeted them with toothless grin, still toying with the fleshy tether that had ensnared her sister.
A dark blot jeered at them from her belly.
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"Why doesn't mother tutor me?" queried Ligeia, knocked-knees dangling restlessly over the lip of her chair. The world-weary professor whom she liked to imagine must never have been a child leveling his tired gaze with her to eke out an impeccably dry response. "As we've discussed your mother remains infirmed."
"Oh." the spritely girl chirped, dog-earing the textbook pedestaled atop her writing desk before venturing to continue. "Is that why mother never visits?" This urged her teacher only to parrot himself, stating once more "As we've discussed your mother remains infirmed." irritation soaking into the terse reply. "Strange." remarked little Ligeia. "How so?" groused the scholar.
"Because when nobody thinks I'm listening they say it's since I killed my sister."
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"Really now, don't you fancy me anymore Cyril?" she teased, a gloved hand walking down her tomboyish frame to explore the small knick now inlaid upon her hip. "I thought it might persuade you to give up this foolishness. If Gais knew you were sparring, and with real swords no less--" her step-brother worriedly confided, as if expecting his sudden arrival. Ligeia snickered back at him and crossed swords, reaching down to roughly seize his most sensitive anatomy in a harsh hold that had him wincing "I hardly think that's the worst we keep from father." she'd put bluntly, sidling up against her older sibling and daring him to kiss her.
Like father like son it seemed. Both so eager to be led astray.
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"A duel?" scoffed Tristan to the sound of hearty applause, as incredulous to the prospect as his peers. "You said I could ask for anything, did you not? I want a duel." she'd remind, already having perfected that pouty little frown of hers. "And whom shall I be dueling M'lady? You have no other suitors of which I am aware." he'd so gloriously announce, the request having caused even her father and his court to stifle chuckles. Even so Ligeia wore an entirely different sort of smile as Cyril, as much a man as she was now a lady, pushed out from his chair. This was less a laughing matter, for of all Lord Siccar's children none were so renowned for their swordsmanship.
Murmurs yipped at his heels all the way, and as he came to stand before his prospective brother-in-law the rasp of metal leaving its scabbard hissed over the growing din of protest. None were so loud as that of Gais, their father; he'd been careful to silence the spread of rumor surrounding his least loved daughter--bastard or no she'd be of use, so long as word of that damnable mark never reached the right ears. It was only as the weapon passed from Cyril to Ligeia that the room breathed a sigh of relief and a few onlookers reprised their amused tittering.
"You'd best humor her, none are so willful as my dearest Ligeia." advised the Lord, with the caveat that any wounds would be sure to spoil the honeymoon. Barely sixteen no one expected her to do more than imitate what she'd seen of her brothers. She'd be disarmed with a showy display and they'd be wed, or so was the prevailing notion. She shed those preconceptions in the instant it took for her sword to dance through Tristan's silhouette.
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"Cognatic primogeniture" she'd crisply tut, it was an unusual toast to say the least, but her family had grown accustomed--if weary--of such antics in the year following her duel. "What of it?" her elder step-brother asked, arm laid lovingly across his wife Emilia. "Very much I should think, now that you've been blessed with child. Too starry eyed to notice the lovely banquet we've prepared?" that at least was something worth drinking to, and many did until Ligeia continued. "Do you think of me when you fuck her or the other way around?" she'd say so casually that the only response was a stunned 'what?' blurted by one of their many drunk uncles, she was unkind enough to repeated it for him.
Plates clattered onto the floor as the table erupted into a shouting match some forty voices strong, that one venomous barb having ignited decades of unaired grievances. It took a furious Gais to restore order, bellowing over his amassed and fractured bloodline. "You conniving, incestuous whore! I should have had the good sense to let you waste away with your mother. You've been nothing but a blight on my good name and venerable house. Out! Out I say! I disown you foul beast. I never wish to lay eyes upon you or that damnedable mark ever again!" Naught but dead silence existed in the wake of the abuse he had hurled, for he was a lord first and father second and spoke not merely words but commands.
"And you won't, father." she'd affirm, rising from her seat at the far end of the table and briskly striding to the door. "You died tragically, revenge for my slaying of Tristan. His father is known to be a vengeful man." she all but cooed, barring the exit. "Why. His men killed everyone here--it's a miracle I survived."
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Bleary eyes fell through the empty space each wrist now offered as a throbbing pain threatened to push her back into the void of unconsciousness. "Impressive. Might have worked if you'd just swallowed your pride and poisoned them." A gruff voice surmised, heaping something onto her chest, she didn't need to look down to know what it was. "Really have to hand it to you." quipped her abductor. Ligeia was too weak to reply.
"I hear your brother's on the mend--might not want to send him your well wishes just yet though, first words he could manage were 'drawn and quartered.' chuffed the unseen man. "But don't you fret, coin doesn't mean much where you're going." It was an impactful statement, had her tensing for a deathblow that didn't come. "Told you not to fret." the voice mocked, tussling her hair. "As it happens you did come into an inheritance today..." mused the hunter, peeling away his glove to display an all too familiar birthmark.
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Aspect of the Hunter:"Belladonna" - Ligeia possesses the ability to mesmerize and entrance others with little more than her rhythmic undulations and a sustained gyre of hip. Unsurprisingly denizens of the dark are not so easily bewitched, her efforts only serving to slow or distract them.
Stats
Strength – B Vitality – B Skill – A Knowledge – A Bloodlust – C Darkness – D
Skills
Greased Eel - Ligeia could put most contortionists to shame, gleefully plunging over that line where flexibility stops being seductive. This has proven to be of questionable utility professionally but indispensable in more private affairs.
Educated Feet - Keen to overcome whatever hand she's been dealt--or in this case denied--Ligeia has sculpted her feet and toes into precision instruments over the later half of her life. Should she ever give up the hunt there's a promising career in watchmaking ahead of her.
Adaptive - Burdened with an Aspect that is exceptionally weak on its own this innovative huntress utilizes an array of duskstone powered inventions cobbled together for the express purpose of working in tandem with her esoteric powers.
Inventory
Mosquito Mask- Far from the traditional fare the Lady Siccar deigns to helm herself in a face obscuring mask festooned with ornamentation, not least of which being the pappenheimer-esque visor that mediates her flinty gaze. With a dangerously sharp proboscis featured prominently she pecks away at foes with rapier precision.
Bondage Armor - More the product of predilection than practicality this custom tailored ensemble is two parts reinforced fencing armor mixed with a dash of sanitarium straight jacket and trussed with enough lace, leather and locks to give it that S&M flair. The sleeves socket snugly into special pockets at the front and back of a sturdy doublet, so that each arm may rest close to the body--the precautionary 'off-hand' favored among classical duelists.
Stinger - A sharp spike and some thirty feet of thick cable attached to a duskstone powered winch. Worn unobtrusively upon the back and operated with a crude turn crank mechanism allowing for its deployment and retrieval.
Plastic, neon and glass choke out the horizon while the sun struggles to worm its way through the canopy of office towers overhead; the human condition made manifest. Here you'd be just another number lost in the shuffle of information, a warm body pushed along by the current of those behind it. But you aren't--and you can't remember the last time you were warm.
Vampire.
Even if it's not the right word you're stuck with it, a condition far less glamorous than a legacy of B-movies and trashy romance novels would have you to believe. Honestly, in this day and age it's hard to tell if you'd be better off alive, an insight easily gained with a single step back from your humanity. You see things more clearly, watch more closely, gaze through the teeming crowds with a predator's sight. That isn't your world anymore, maybe it never was.
This city doesn't have shadows; it is the neon and decay that shelter you, sustain you. Yellow tape and chalk outlines your only connection to the blind masses you've left behind. This is your world, but you are not alone in it.
Draug, Alp, Vetala and Dhampir. These are the right words for your kin and kith. The proud afflicted, ancient stewards of an older grudge. The clans have always fought, laid blame for their current condition and perceived slights at each other's feet. There was honor to it once, but the prey have proved unlikely teachers. Diplomacy meted out at the end of a rifle. It is a secret war seldom fought on a single front, for even a blind man will fumble though the dark.
Hunters hound us as they always have, their art perfected during our long decline. Strengthened by clarity of purpose. You were their target and you succumbed, a true death seemed certain. But we have taught them much as well, and they are not so merciful. Toothless they will call you, for your fangs are no longer your own. Usurped with the unfamiliar feeling of empty space where you heart once rested.
You are their's now. Unwilling yet unwavering. What foes await you in the world you left behind?
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Testing the water a bit for my first RP idea here...
Set against the backdrop of a neon-soaked worker's dystopia ravaged by global warming, espionage and an ever-climbing sea level the story will follow a group of 'Toothless'. Vampires that have had their hearts cut out, hidden away and held hostage at the whim of a shadowy agency. With obedience beating the alternative you serve your new masters in ways no mere mortal could manage...
World-wise life as we know it gave way to an every-second-matters corporate nightmare, where the prevalence of machines has phased out human labor almost entirely; over seventy percent of the workforce now found in the ballooning information industry. Earth has gotten smaller with the rising tides and influx of refugees and space is a prized commodity; your average Joe inevitably works and lives in the same building, sharing a dormitory with his co-workers. Privacy doesn't exist, people don't matter and apathy reigns.
The modern vampire hasn't fared much better; hunted and fractured they wage their hidden war, more and more of their elders lost each year, and with them their heritage. Ignorant, inglorious immortals such as yourself forced from public eye by necessity, like rats in a midden. Suffocating desperation the only inheritance for the recently sired.
Basically you'll be a sort of supernatural 'suicide squad'. Expendable vampires forced to fight threats both mystic and mundane in place of human operatives. Advanced standards with the small stipulation that there are a few tropes I'd prefer avoided: *No one hit kills. It doesn't matter that you're a vampire in a room full of nameless mooks. Don't no sell dangerous people. *The world has moved on--you should too. If you walk into a gun fight with a sword you -will- lose. *Don't romanticize vampires. You're not allowed to be good people.
Other than that all I ask is that you be excellent to each other and myself. I'll be posting the different flavors of bloodsucker in detail but for now enjoy these bare bones descriptions:
Draug - Corpse eating undead that can enlarge themselves by shedding their skin. They hold dominion over snakes and can absorb memories from the soil.
Dhampir - The ill fated progeny of a human and vampire. Until the curse matures they're afflicted with far less debilitating weaknesses than their elders, but likewise command only a fledgling array of powers. They hold no dominion.
Vetala - Phantasmal puppeteers of the recently slain. Though virtually indestructible the bodies they inhabit are not, and they're rendered both immaterial and ineffectual without one. They hold domain over carrion birds and can pull whispers from the wind.
Alp - Shapeshifters that sustain themselves on nightmares Alps hold dominion over insects and can glean a creature's desires with their 'swallowing stare.'
