mamagermany

Somethings Can't Be Forgotten

Name: Eleanora Radley
Age: 243 (turned at age 22)
Affiliation: Mercer clan (loosely)
Song: Team - Iggy Azalea
Background: As a human, Eleanora was part of the merchant class and was part of a family of social climbers. She wasn’t well educated, but made a conscious effort to stay aware of what was going on in her house. Between her and her parents, she was able to wheedle into a marriage with a local minor noble. He unfortunately kept her mostly housebound. She had two children by him, one stillborn, the other died at several months old. With life dull, depressing, and unstimulating, Eleanora kept watching and listening for an opportunity to escape. She got her chance when her husband died suddenly, and she took as much of his money as possible and ran. She made it across the English Channel, but she didn’t make it far into France before she was mugged one night, bitten, mostly drained of blood and left for dead. Her attacker was sloppy and their recklessness meant Eleanora became a vampire. Broke, alone, feeling sick and crazy, Eleanora vanished into the forests of the Ardennes. She didn’t resurface for years until she’d gotten control of herself. She then fled from the Ardennes, having terrified the locals, and spent several more years drifting around France, quickly being outed in most villages, chased out at best and almost killed at worst. Even so, her ability to blend in was improving and by the time she reached the Holy Roman Empire, she was able to lead a fairly stable life, hopping from one major city to the other, mostly avoiding other vampires, and began exploring the education she’d always wanted to have by hanging around the universities the area held. She remained mostly undetected for over one hundred years, eventually exploring other European cities and universities, and eventually returned to England.

Jonathan met Eleanora at an English university (not the first university he went to). She was already a vampire and he recognized her as one. Due to their similar study habits, they ended up spending plenty of time together, and Jonathan became smitten with her. He began to court her, and she liked him enough and humored his affections, but it wasn’t until he took her to meet Elizabeth did she take him very seriously. She joined the Mercer clan partially for Jonathan, partially for the safety in numbers.

She considers education to be her key to survival.

~~~

Her role in the clan is to move to the town proper posing as Jonathan's wife, with her social skills and intelligence helping establish them as regular and trustworthy people. She also assists Jonathan with moving bodies and occasionally as an emergency messenger.

Somethings Can't Be Forgotten

Woo!

And I'm working on another character too.

Somethings Can't Be Forgotten

Ah, thank you. I definitely still have work to do on him (I only came up with him today, after all), but it's a good start.

How is the starter going?

Somethings Can't Be Forgotten

Name: Jonathan Mercer
Age: 217 (turned at age 26)
Affiliation: Mercer clan
Song: Starlight - Muse
Background: Jonathan barely remembers his real family, and he doesn't remember his real last name at all. He was born to a working-class couple. His father flitted from job to job as necessary. His mother took care of him. He was their first child. He has some memory of his birth mother, a hard-working, often exhausted, gruffly loving woman. He doesn't remember the disease that killed her or his father. He was found by Elizabeth as a homeless orphan at about seven years old on the streets of an English town. Something about him reminded her of her long-lost, likely long-dead son, the child she never got to finish raising. She took him in off the street and gave him a home and love. From then on, his childhood was somewhat normal, and he got used to his new mother's odd habits. When he was fifteen, she told him the truth about her existence, and to her great thanks, she'd earned his trust and he didn’t run away or turn her in. However, he was still uncomfortable with the discovery and began striving for more normalcy and independence. Several years later, Jonathan left his mother to begin attending a university, where he could bask in education and the company of his peers. He did return to Elizabeth after several years of study, having come to the decision that he wanted to become a vampire. To deal with his turning and subsequent uncontrollable stage, he begged his mother to keep him closely watched and restrained, which Elizabeth obliged.

His motivation for choosing the existence of a vampire is based in how he valued his education and time in the university setting. He saw the potential to learn and see so much. He realized the opportunity to witness hundreds of years worth of history in the making. He came to the (possibly naive) conclusion that perhaps being a vampire wasn't so bad, from seeing how his mother dealt with her life. He became convinced by watching his mother that being a vampire didn't mean one had to completely isolate themselves from the world, and vampires could survive without killing. Even after almost 200 years, Jonathan has never killed a human.

~~~

His role in the organization of the clan is to move into the town proper, under the guise of a doctor, and establish himself as a trustworthy presence. With decades of medical training in universities beyond his physical age, he does provide the services of a doctor to the town. When a patient is unable to be cured, he convinces the family to let him take the body to some inexpensive coffinmakers outside town. He then takes the body to his mother for them to all drink from.

Background is subject to improvement

Somethings Can't Be Forgotten

Her son is definitely dead af, but I do like the idea that she still has those maternal feelings, having been robbed of the chance to fully raise him, and at some point in her long vampire life, adopting a human boy to raise and making a vampire of him years later.

Alright. Maybe we should both come up with basic characters to be a part of the other's clan? The Reese and Mercer clans, respectfully. I only have two members of Elizabeth's clan in mind so far.

Somethings Can't Be Forgotten

I've started giving it some thought, about other clan members and how they'd come together and their relationships and such. I've been excited about coming up with details about Elizabeth's life, and I want to do something with the son her background mentioned.

That'd be interesting to do. That's probably a good idea, so if the clans are separate at some point, we don't just have to RP with ourselves for a while.

Somethings Can't Be Forgotten

I just come to realize, we'll need to start thinking of who these clans they created are, who are they made up of.

More character sheets, then!

Men vs. Women Race to 1000

536

Somethings Can't Be Forgotten

Name: Elizabeth Mercer
Age: 587 (turned at age 28)
Affiliation: Mercer clan (founder and matriarch)
Song: 5 Jahre - L'Ame Immortelle
Way Down We Go - Kaleo
Background: Elizabeth was born in the 1200s to a commoners family. By the time she was turned, she was in her late 20s, with a husband by arranged marriage, whom she regarded with apathy. He was respectfully dismissive of her and she of him. They had no feelings for each other, and though he had a mistress and she stayed faithful, she really did not care, nor was it her place to care. At the time of her turning, they had been married for 10-12 years. They had a son, and should have had more children, but Elizabeth had a difficult time conceiving and carrying children.

She was turned on a cold winters night, away from her forest village home to gather firewood. A small band of vampires had been passing through her village and one attacked her. Before they could drain Elizabeth of blood and kill her, her husband discovered them and the vampire chose to flee. Her husband brought her back home, but she was already almost dead and residual poison from the vampire's fangs was already in her. He pronounced her dead and sent their son to get the village mortician. They were fitting her for her coffin about an hour later when she revived as a vampire. In her initial confusion, she mistakenly tried to attack the mortician, and, with her newly paled skin and sharper teeth, was quickly recognized as a vampire. Her husband and the mortician drove her out and she fled into the woods. Her village was both on the hunt and on the lookout for her for the next few days, so she left them behind.

She emigrated to the nearest city, where she attempted to live under the radar and understand what she had become. She was regarded as a crazy homeless beggar woman for much of the next decade. She managed to survive in the shadows until she worked up the mental stability and sense needed to live alongside people again. The life of a beggar disgusted her and she yearned for something more normal, with dignity and a purpose. All she could do was save what little money she acquired and leave for somewhere new, to live better.

Her survival wasn't easy at all. She was homeless for years more, forced to move around as a migrant after she fed, and there was little work available to someone like her. She was quickly growing weary of a violent, lonely, meaningless life. One night she got her break. She attacked a carriage, took out its master, and drove away his wife and servants. It was then Elizabeth realized he was a man of good means, and she robbed his remains and his carriage. She fled miles away before she felt safe to use the money. She bought her first home in years, and in a home she found purpose, something akin to what she found while she was married - not to a husband, but to a home.

She couldn't interact with people all that much, but she had stability and a roof over her head. She began buying decrepit homes on the ends of villages and repaired them and sold them for a profit years later. She cultivated flower and vegetable gardens and reminded herself what it felt like to have a purpose to nurture and protect something. She began robbing graves instead of hunting, trying to keep her home stable. She slowly taught herself to read and write, partially by studying words inscribed on coins.

By the time she was about 200 years old, Elizabeth had a routine of buying and selling homes and had a relatively stable, if not lackluster, life, with a faint sense of purpose. It wasn't enough. Everything she had was so temporary. She still yearned for something truly meaningful. In one unremarkable village, she found something.

~~~

In order to survive and preserve a measure of stability on the edge of human society, Elizabeth organized her clan with specific roles to avoid suspicion. When moving from place to place, usually every seven years, Elizabeth moves the majority of her clan to a house on the outskirts of whatever large town they're residing in. They pose as a family of coffin-makers (which they do), and Elizabeth poses as Kilroy's second wife.

Somethings Can't Be Forgotten

Well, that'll be great

It'll be a bit before I can move Elizabeth to the character section, my computer has been dying on me, but I can still write responses.