Ooooooooooooooookay, so here is my tentative character! I wasn't sure how to go about showing the CS, so I just took a screenshot of the PDF linked in the first post (with my character info, of course), uploaded it, and stuck it here. The rest of the stuff I have posted here is more or less questions and answers presented in the "Prelude" character story building. So before I go on and put it all out, please understand that this is my first time building a character for this particular RPG: I'm probably going to make mistakes and I don't have the experience to know how to optimize my character according to her role as a business savvy aristocrat. I've also tried to brush up on my history and more details about Europe and the Vampire lore in general: I am undoubtedly going to take liberties in how I portray things because I am not a historian or a veteran with this material. Finally, the Prelude aspects I've written that tell my character's backstory are absurdly long. I just started and went on and on and on and on and on...

So if it gets to be to much and it's making your eyes bleed, feel free to tell me what I can fix and I'll be more than happy to edit. As far as canon and what's acceptable to the RPG is up to the DM, so if there are issues with what I've come up with (or you just have better ideas for what I'm trying to do period), I'm also happy to fix them. In essence, I have a former baroness who's seeking enlightenment and remnants of the lore of Nod, and that is why she will end up in Balgrad.

[center][h3]CS[/h3][/center]
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[img]http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/a508/Fairbyqueen/VampireSheet_zpsh0ktiymh.jpg[/img] [/hider]

[b]Appearance:[/b] Celeste has the pale, impossibly smooth skin of her fellow vampires. Her build is a step above lanky, giving her full feminine form that still retains willowy grace. She has long blond hair (usually braided up in a headdress) and icy blue eyes. As far as facial features, she keeps up a mostly human appearance, sporting flushed cheeks, high cheekbones, and a soft, weak chin. For a woman of her time and culture, she is a bit too lean for the ideal woman, but is otherwise quite appealing.

As far as clothing, Celeste wears the clothing of the time, sporting loose, floor length dresses with long, tight sleeves. Her circumstances do allow her to wear better clothing than most, consisting of fine, dyed wools, embroidered mantles, and thin belts with clasps of precious metal. For formal occasions, she will don the sleeveless surcoat of her family: a blue garment emblazoned with silver feathers.

[b]Mannerisms:[/b] Celeste is easily labeled as condescending; she considers her noble heritage a rite that places her above other neonates and expects to be addressed as a lady wherever she goes. In return, she shows respect and even reverence to those in higher society, be they mortal or vampire. She has a love of theology, music, literature, and art; others who make such pursuits a way of life she also shows respect towards regardless of social standing. Her grace and good manners reek of noble breeding, and so it is natural for her to feel at ease or be welcomed in high societies: the opposite is true nearly everywhere else.

[b]What was your mortal life like?[/b]
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Celeste was born and raised in her family’s barony (a territory of about 10sq. miles in the Gascony region of France). Though she knew nothing of vampires growing up, her family unknowingly entertained quite a number of them, as the beautiful countryside was a popular retreat for the nobles of larger cities like Paris and Marseille. Her family’s estate entertained many salons, opulently spending money on parties and meetings where artists, nobles, authors, and musicians could celebrate French culture throughout the region.

In addition to hearing foreign dialects on a monthly basis, Celeste received private tutoring for the practices befitting a lady, namely the linguistics (Old French and English), etiquette, and business affairs she would use as a fully-fledged baroness. She also had a gift for music, and practiced both vocal and harp music from a young age. In private, she was able to occasionally enjoy horse riding and archery, practices that she insisted on for the sake of getting outside of the house once in a while. Her understanding of Latin was largely based on her family’s devout faith to the Roman-Catholic church, who took readings from the Old Testament daily.

Thus, she became used to fervent study and continued to press into dialects of music, religion, and French culture. Occasionally, she was given leave to visit the great Marseille in the company of her younger brother. She was pampered, educated, and gifted with music, all qualities that lead to her being targeted by a vassal from the ranks of The Courts of Love.

In regards to personality, she developed a sense of nationalism—no culture could compare to that of France’s. Her hardworking personality led her to become one of the most worthy members of the family to run the household, and the fact that she would never have the power to do so because of her womanhood caused deep resentment. While she loved the opulent parties of the estate, she also became aware that her family was steadily overspending well outside of their means; her father would hear nothing of curbing his need for the company of cultured nobles.

A sense of isolation eventually developed between her practicality and the garish appetite of her family. She began to manipulate the grossly unattended expenses of the family, chipping what she could off her father’s orders for goods to reinvest in the barony’s properties. Even so, she knew it was not nearly enough to save the family. A sane woman would have given up the enterprise and accepted that she would be married off to another bothersome family anyways, but she saw the situation as a challenge.

She started by fleeing from her own arranged marriage, making use of servants whose trust she’d gained to help cart her off to some of the family’s friends in Paris. It was quite the spectacle, and she was soundly rebuked, but the insult to her fiancé’s family was such that further attempts at marriage could not be made between the two families. While her mother attempted to downplay the scandal and her father continued to drown in his own narcissism, Celeste began to council her brothers about their ignorance on the state of the family’s finances.
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[b]When did you first meet a Cainite?[/b]
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Although Celeste was occasionally exposed to vampires masquerading as French noblemen and women, she did not gain anything more than fleeting attention from any one of them until the incident of her fled marriage.  
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[b]Who was your Sire?[/b]
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According to her sire, Jean Arave Moret, it was “the angry flush of indignance against the snowy innocence of a bride’s garb” that first intrigued him to her. His standing as a viscount made it easy to infiltrate her family, and he made use of their frequent salons to observe her. Her passion for change and willingness to subvert her own father were entertaining to watch, her ability to enrapture him with music more than pleasing.

He approached her as an eclectic suitor, caring nothing of her previous scandal and feigning interest in having good relations with the family’s barony. Despite the pressure from her family, she refused him again and again, and every time, he returned with more poetry, music, and affections, the picture of the perfect, chivalrous bachelor. This annoyed her to no end, up to the point where she refused to leave her room when he was in any close proximity to the family’s property. Naturally, he reveled in the game, taking all the wrong approaches he could think of until he decided the time had come to claim her.

The sudden, inhuman charm he used was both alarming and alluring when he caught her alone during an evening salon. In her naiveté, she believed him to be a silly, but forthright man—someone whose position in life could elevate her own and make her comfortable both physically and emotionally.  Their illicit affair began, and after many clandestine meetings and trysts, he proposed. The resulting marriage was grand and happy, and she believed for a moment that a new life with a respectful partner was about to begin.

The consummation of their wedding night, however, was not what she expected. He Embraced her and she consequently became his childe. While he still clung to the pretenses of mortal wedding vows, it was all in mockery. As her inner beast awakened, she not only saw the depth of his deceit, but found a strange pleasure in it: she was duped into undeath and would pay back the creature responsible for it ten times over. As a childe, however, she had no choice but to watch and learn from him, enduring the indulgences of her sire. She was his beloved toy, and he had more plans than to simply show her how to survive. Her first feeding was of his blood, a mistake she realized much too late. The basics of feeding he made very simple, demonstrating methods of extracting blood from multiple hosts, leaving them weak and alive and in euphoric oblivion as to what had just occurred.

He showed her the power of true corruption: in a matter of weeks, her father “disappeared” and the barony, at the bequest of the sons, was legally placed in Jean’s hands. He could enthrall mortals with the smallest effort, using his position of social power and inhuman graces to seduce and comfort his way into their best graces. He promised her family security while turning them into thralls, inviting his host of vampiric peons to descend upon the barony like wolves—it was now his very own sanctioned hunting territory.

What surprised Celeste most was how unmoved she was by the debacle. People she had been raised with, men and women who she still had some shred of respect for were reduced to slaves of their own pleasures. It was a fitting end, in its own way, or perhaps a fitting beginning. She even had to respect Jean’s social genius in manipulating those she had never been able to influence her entire life, as well as his ability to maintain her petty barony while exploiting the most blood out of it.

Resentment did grow in her, however. The world he was playing with was [i]her[/i] world, a birthright she had always been denied because of her gender. He had no intention of handing his newest toy to her despite having a palace of his own and she would not stand for it. The more she was taught, the more she fed her hatred until her beast spoke firmly in her mind: it was time to end the being who had created her. The consequences of that action mattered not if she could never hold dominion even with the powers of the damned.

What happened at the end of her plans was the worst possibility. Jean knew very well what her intentions were and was more than prepared when she slipped into his chambers at the crack of dawn. She thought he was asleep, that if she stabbed his vitals enough times, he would perish in a half-awoken state of agony. As she poised herself over his body, he did something she never would have predicted—he bit his tongue and opened his mouth.

The blood she had once feasted on was a sore temptation; it made her hesitate. Before she knew it, Jean’s slit wrist was on her mouth and she was suckling it like a baby. He repeated the act the night thereafter, and the night after that. She became his loyal, obsessed thrall. Jean, however, deemed such an act as protection, not punishment. Bringing up her attempt to the residing prince would only get himself punished, too, so he resorted to branding her on his own. The distinct memory she despises most was that she considered it an act of mercy.

Vengeance and desperate need of her sire caused such conflict within herself that she could feel the beast within crawling out. She wanted to kill, she wanted to kiss; she wanted pain, she wanted relief. Madness was starting to take ahold of her, and even her sire began to have difficulty controlling her.
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[b]How do you feel about mortals?[/b]
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Celeste’s return to some semblance of humanity set upon her as she realized a simple fact: thrall or no, the woman she had been in life had accomplished far more than she ever had in her time as an Cainite, albeit that time was brief. She [i]did[/i] have the power to bend mortals and vampires under her will—she’d just been fighting the wrong fight. Her enemy wasn’t her sire, but herself. He controlled her because she could not control herself. If there was still something human inside of her, the soul who had once refused him time and time again, there was hope of stepping out of the shadow of the barony she was raised into.

Thus, though she feels like the lives of mortals are fleeting, she also believes that they are integral to keeping the human part of her alive. It’s not just a matter of being temporarily enraptured by their emotions and creations, but the fact that they share a heritage, and perhaps, share the same fight against inner beasts. The will to survive, to control oneself and one’s surroundings is an active choice.
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[b]How do you see yourself?[/b]
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Celeste sees herself as a monster of the night, a capricious creature that can easily forget its human roots. She was cold as a human and remains so in undeath, but the sense of duty to guide and protect those under her birthright is the magnet of her moral compass. It is the source of her vengeance and the reminder of her need to retain control. She dedicated herself to learning and went behind the backs of her family to become a baroness that could protect them and the serfs underneath them. Thus, she is a hypocritical hero of her own cause, struggling to retain what sense of empathy she still has.
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[b]How did you meet the rest of the coterie?[/b]
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When Celeste became a neonate, she officially joined vampiric society. Although she was bound to her sire and the land she had once considered her own, she decided that she was not yet prepared to face either. She sought after what she heard only in whispers: Golconda. She knew such enlightenment was far beyond reach as she currently was, but pursuing a path of humanity and finding at least some control and sense of self would help her further her goals. There was also the fact that such a personal crusade would put some distance between herself and Jean, helping to weaken his hold over her.
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[b]Where is your domain?[/b]
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Although her sire holds dominion over her barony, she is still considered the baroness over it. Whether out of kindness or his own amusement, Jean has allowed her personal possession of taverns within the barony and express permissions to hunt there as she pleases, with or without other vampires of her choice.
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[b]What drives you?[/b]
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In her search for Golconda, Celeste is willing to travel to the lands of the Erciyes Fragments, hoping to find more clues or relics that will lead to the enlightenment of Golconda or the forgiveness of God. She wants nothing more than to be free of the pulsing desires that constantly undermine her control, with the intention to carve out her own destiny and rule over her own people.  With that control and the gift of unlife, she believes that she can forge her own society of culture and moderation.[/hider]