| Walker in Darkness | |
|---|---|
| |
| IC Information | |
| Full Name: | Samara Moon |
| Deed Name: | Whispering River |
| Gender: | Female |
| Age: | between 19 and 22? |
| Breed: | Homid |
| Tribe: | Bubasti |
| Pryio: | Twilight |
| Rank: | 1 or 2 |
| Height: | 5'7" |
| Weight: | 120 lbs |
| Hair: | Black |
| Eyes: | Green |
| Nature: | Avant-Garde |
| Demeanor: | Bon Vivant |
| OOC Information | |
| Theme Song: | Hybrid - Last Man Standing |
| Quote: | "That looks fascinating." |
| Status: | Concept |
| Player: | Malkav |
Personality[]
In many ways, Samara could be considered a sociopath, in that she is severely lacking in what most would consider morals. She sees laws as things to be ignored when inconvenient and abused when helpful. If it would get her closer to her goal, Samara would cheerfully seduce someone for the singular purpose of slitting their throat in bed.
On the other hand, Samara has a very well-developed sense of Justice. In a way, it could be argued her disregard for Law has to do with the fact that she regards it as unimportant. The crimes and punishments she's worried about come from a higher power than mere humans and their laws. She isn't worried about things like theft and murder. She's worried about Sin and Damnation.
To top all this off, she's got the curiosity cats are renowned for in spades. If there's even a hint of something she doesn't know about, she's likely to go chasing after it until enough data has been acquired to sate her curiosity.
Sheet[]
- Homid Attributes
- Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 2
- Social: Charisma 2, Manipulation 3, Appearance 3
- Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 3, Wits 3
- Abilities
- Talents: Dodge 1, Empathy 2, Insight 3, Integrity 1, Sensitivity 3, Subterfuge 2, Vigilance 3 (+6)
- Skills: Etiquette 1, Meditation 2, Research 2, Stealth 1 (+1)
- Knowledges: Academics 1, Cosmology 1, Enigmas 3, Investigation 3, Linguistics 1 (English, Arabic), Lore (Bastet, Wyrm) 2, Occult 4, Rituals 3 (+5)
- Advantages
- Rage 1
- Gnosis 2 (should probably get more)
- Willpower 7 (+2)
- Gifts: Gift: Scholar's Friend, Gift: Sweet Hunter's Smile, Gift: Spirits' Sight, (Gift: Sense Wyrm?)
- Hedge Magic: Summoning, Binding and Warding?
- Backgrounds: Background: Secrets 2, Background: Jamak (Mantis/Whispers) 2, Background: Contacts 3
- Merits: Merit: Officially Dead (2)
- Flaws: Flaw: Too Curious (3), Flaw: Disconcerting (2)
Secrets[]
Contacts[]
History[]
Some secrets are perhaps best left buried. Some hungers are best left unfulfilled.
Some people never do what they should.
She was always a curious one, always getting into things, always asking questions. It drove her parents to distraction, much less the poor, harried house staff that was forced to chase after her. To her credit, at least, she recognized the effort that was spent on her behalf, and she did what she could to help those that helped her. However, when the master's only daughter's idea of "help" was to scramble three floors up a drainpipe to fetch down a stuck cat...
Her family could have been considered wealthy, but the girl never really noticed. Does a fish notice the water it swims in? Their home had staff, her father had a driver, and her school uniform was personally tailored. Normal, as far as she knew. However, here and there, she began to learn that normalcy was relative. Some of her classmates did not have these things, never had, and probably never would. And while there were the usual remarks and sneers about "pampered rich kids," those that actually knew the girl realized that she was not snobbish and aloof. Merely sheltered. Part of a different world than their own, but by no means unwilling to cross the gulf. She wanted to know what it was like to be different.
She wanted to know everything.
The years came and went. Her parents were, by turns, delighted and infuriated by their daughter. A brilliant mind, an inquisitive mind... sometimes too inquisitive. They tried to take steps, tried to keep her "safe," but if anything, their preventative measures simply urged the girl on. Though she excelled in her classes, her free time quickly became a tangle of sex, drugs, strange people and stranger activities. She fell into and out of a few "cults" among her fellow highschoolers before her parents even realized it, though they knew what sorts of "debauchery" their daughter seemed intent on pursuing. What they didn't know was the same curiosity that drove her into such things also drove many of her partners away. She was always somehow detached, even when hazed on chemicals or in the throes of passion. Watching. Considering. It made many of them uneasy, even as it drew others.
And, as her parents feared, it drew the wrong sort.
She'd snuck out again, having been under house arrest for the past month (again), to see what her newest batch of "religious experimenters" was up to. It was a full moon, late in October. Not true All Hallows, but close enough that they thought to try something. Little did she know that a few of their number had more concrete plans, more actual knowledge, than most. They gathered in the park long after it was officially closed, lighting the little grotto with candles and camp-lanterns, and began the ritual. Almost immediately, she could tell something was different. Scents seemed sharper, the edges of things seemed a bit clearer, sounds more distinct. At first, she passed it off as the drugs, also blaming the chemicals for what she was seeing. Some of her friends were strange, twisted. Frightening.
Then the Change took her, and the world came apart at the seams.
Two members of the "cult" were fomori, hoping to turn the rest into ready hosts for more Banes. They were not expecting nearly three meters of frenzied werecat to explode in their midst, and the results were devastating. Tainted and innocent alike died in the same, Rage-howling storm, and the wreckage found by those authorities drawn by the noise was ruled as a wild-animal attack on delinquents violating trespassing laws.
There were no survivors, sadly.
When she awoke, she was naked and sore in an unfamiliar room. This was not exactly an unusual event for the girl, but she knew that something was different this time. She could smell it. Moreover, the man waiting in the kitchen was not a paramour or dealer. He even ordered her to go back in the room and get dressed while turning a most curious shade of magenta. Only after she'd gotten on the clothing he'd provided for her would he tell her what was going on. Tell her about the Changing Breeds, the War, and the Bastet.
He himself was a Bagheera, a were-panther, and of a different type than she, though both their pelts were as black as night. He told her what he knew of the mistrusted Bubasti, her people that made their ancestral homeland in Egypt, but the cats of Khem keep their secrets closer than most, and most of what he knew was little more than hearsay and rumor, and most of that dark. Indeed, it was then that she realized the way he was looking at her was a sort of nervousness, as if he expected her to sprout wings or lunge for his throat. Interesting. She assured him that she had no wish to harm him, wishing only to learn what had happened. He told her that another of her Tribe that he knew lived not too far away, and would be coming to take her in hand in the next few days.
Until then, he had to put up with a Very Inquisitive Kitten. The poor man. Nevertheless, both of them survived until her real teacher arrived and took her away to begin her education in earnest. Her old name was left on the empty grave her parents erected for her, and from then on, she became Samara Moon. She learned why her Tribe was so mistrusted, learned that they were the walkers in darkness, the seekers of things that would otherwise be left unfound out of fear. It was their task to learn what they could of Cahlash's ways, so that they might better fight the madness of the Asura. Too often, this led the ignorant and the fearful to label them as having fallen into the Corruption, but that was simply something that they had to deal with. It didn't matter what the other Tribes thought, so long as it did not interfere with their sworn duties.
Or their vengeance. The past crimes of Sutekh's spawn have not been forgotten, and they show little inclination to mend their ways in this modern era. She learned of the vampiric war that had scourged Egypt in millennia past, between Set and Osiris, and how her people had thrown their lot in against the Dark Serpent beside the wolfen Silent Striders. Sadly, the battle had been lost, and their beast-kin with it. A terrible price to pay, uniting the Bubasti and their lupine allies in loss. However, the war was far from over.
These were the lessons she took with her after the Year of Learning was over, and she took her place as "Whispering River" among the Tekhmet of her Tribe. Now she could finally begin what she had been waiting her entire life to start, all unknowing. What followed could be called a time of adventure: Samara and her teacher roamed the whole of Europe, so that she might see things and have answers for her inevitable questions. Until she asked a question for which her teacher did not have an answer.
"What could have so soaked that building in madness, if it was not Cahlash?"
It was one of the old Bedlams, a relic from an era when insanity was thought to be caused by demons and ill-balanced humors within the body. And in it she saw something more than sick people receiving treatment, more than patients and doctors, stone and time. A shadow that she did not know the shape of, that seemed pressed into the very fabric of the world in that place. But it was not the touch of the Wyrm, or at least no more than would be expected of such a place. Indeed, it seemed almost more... Wyld...
It was there that she parted ways with her teacher, for he wished to continue his journeys and she wished to find out what could drive a place mad. She had theories, of course: one of the Asura, perhaps, or some spirit from the Far Umbra, twisted and unknowable to mere mortals. However, she had precious little proof towards any of these hypotheses, and was under no illusions that she would be able to defeat such a creature, whatever it was. She would require aid.
Perhaps the gods of Fate smiled, for a Khan renowned for his battles against the Asura and their spawn was in the area. It took little urging on her part, merely the suggestion that she had the scent of some demon-thing that was proving oddly elusive...
The hunt would take over a year, and lead them across the waves of the Atlantic, to a town in Colorado named Crystal Springs. Perhaps there, she would learn what it was she was chasing.