ᴀɢᴇ —
"but tell of days in goodness spent."
Based upon initial impression, Maharet appears, unassumingly, stranded in her early thirties; time eludes the eternal, and she cannot say or remember how much she had been aged before the blood and night became her mistress and her master. An accumulation of paintings and depictions of her likeness can be dated back into the late 1400’s, leading into the Early Renaissance. Among her own people, Maharet is considered entirely Ancient, an elder by blood and enthrallment that comes naturally with finesse.
ᴀᴘᴘᴇᴀʀᴀɴᴄᴇ —
"she walks in beauty, like the night."
Vixen-esque: a rictus befitting the illusion of a vulpine seductress by the sharp planes of her countenance and the critical deduction of her slanted, almond featured eyes. Every definition of Maharet’s psyche is poised, refined, an incredibly obtuse elegance practiced from an early age and systematically exercised, and nurtured through her adaptation of many centuries. Through the ages; the fashions, the technology; the many lives and facades she has underwent, there has been one consistent factor to her assemblage: the mane of red hair that has oft been trademarked in her various cameos. Never once altering within colour, but having beheld many a style in her age. A dark ginger within the cold, and a warm flame in the sun, and left alone in a tumble of waves that is entirely artful in every slight curl, complimented and off set by the steelish azure of her eyes and pale complexion. Sweeping back her fringe exposes the unique bridge of her nose, proud, and accentuated by the slight of her brow; akin to something delicate. However, beneath the softness of her wide, bow shaped mouth is the feral savagery lurking beneath.
Maharet’s dress sense over the years has adapted to a peculiar, often bi-polar style, switching on her whims and whichever time has best suited her current deposition, similar to her method of decoration and decorum. Interchanging to heavy, mauve velvet, to waif, slim skirts and chiffon in the finest of materials she has imported over time, Maharet is never seen donning a duplicate in her wardrobe and proudly owns a plethora of styles and fabrics within her arsenal of fashion. Time has bequeathed the vampire with a lithe body, slender in appearance, never burdened by the limitations of mortal flaws, further brightened by her ancient prowess and the uniqueness of her blood. She carries herself with a languid simplicity, all gathered into a five-six frame, deliberate and exact, deducting her purpose with coiled muscle, almost lazy and hypnotic with the sheath of her eyes shuttering the steel backdrop of her glances.
ᴘᴇʀsᴏɴᴀ
ʟɪᴛʏ —
"where thoughts serenely sweet express"
When one lives as long as she, and gains with them many titles and names, time and life blurs into a myriad of shapes and forms; colours blotted into a series of hues and saturation that eventually become one thing: grey. Maharet’s personality has become such: a muted, desolate existence of tragedy and sensitivity by the sheer magnitude of her life. Bored does not even come close to describing her state of mind. However, the current listlessness she experiences does not deviate from her methods of enjoyment, gluttony is one of her favoured sins, bridled beside vanity and hubris. She indulges through the splendors of every age with a mass of subjects, toys, projects and dalliances with an abandon of pure, unsaturated hunger whenever the urge takes her. Not to be confused with carelessness, for Maharet has not lived this long by means of unattributed irrationality, or means of cruelty for her own selfish entertainment. She’s methodically careful, choosing those around her with care and finesse or simply embarks into years of solitude - it’s amazing how easily the eternal can slumber. On first impressions Maharet is deducted as soft, careful, deliberate in her idle motions, as if to betray attention away from her person, but hidden beneath the initial barrier is the wealth of knowledge and habit, the critically judging woman who takes catalog of everything around her.
But life, existence, is boring, dull; illustration a cavernous void in the pit of her being. And any sense of morality or obligation has been heavily warped in her perception, to the exact detail of where right and wrong do not exist, but various uniforms of grey instead interchange. To inquire of the scarlet mistress if she feels guilt in her life, or any reservation, would receive a slow, disarming blink of complacency that’s frustrating to those who penchant themselves to be above the dank, dismal refuge to the trafficking of the mortal soul and the wealth of currency that is blood. Boredom can be assumed when Maharet browses, when she’s not dipping into the crime syndicate, applying her knowledge of the years through their induction and accession into the game. However, Maharet never limits herself, her tendency is to be involved in everything she is capable of dwelling into, no matter the danger or the betrayal - when you have not to live for, you have nothing to lose.
However, no matter the amount of cool deduction, she is a creature of the night, of the blood and the shadows, and as such of their rein she is capable of the feral, bestial nature of their unstable desires. During the wicked hours, when Maharet steps across the threshold, she easily slips into the glutton, the wanton lady who pursues mortals based upon their beauty and favour. Though humans, frail and soft, are not the sole, [un]fortunate individuals to be subjected to her enthrallment, Maharet does not discriminate again her lessor kin [and she says this dismissively] - centuries of having endured such and witnessed changes within society has blurred the line for this particular vampire to where most faces blend seamlessly to a blur of blood, scent, and the essence that is life no matter which taint it carries.
Since the time of the Canoness, Maharet has developed a more sadistic and manic disposition, interchanging the complacent, gluttonous mistress from her former self that was refined and poised. She's perhaps more willing to bend and sway those of lesser rank and royalty into her favour, if only to toss them aside later when their use wanes into nonexistence. The pit of woe inside her breast has increased ten fold, pelting Maharet with a carnal desire and need to smother the void that she is becoming.
ʙɪᴏɢʀᴀᴘʜʏ —
"one shade the more, one ray the less"
During the Early Renaissance, when the cultural movement of art and intellect pursuits began cupping the fringe of human intelligence and perspective, the first oil painting of Maharet’s nature was first displayed, bequeathing her the title of The Lady in Red. An enigma of what she was rather than who, for the man who captured her likeness in the forever swatches of colour had been found drained of his lifeblood the following day his gallery had been embellished around the infamous piece. Though still careful and deciding in nature, some branches of the illustrious Nyctari family, known as the Nyctarius in the early royals of Italy, had been rather offended by the gall of painters, philosophers and men known to this day to have cultivated the branch between the fourteenth century and the seventeenth. To think they could seal away their beauty and power on a mere canvas or to be told within whimsical tales! Maharet was still young, fresh, youthful among the leagues of family and her creator, a woman who merely went by the name of Maman.
Vampires and other worldly creatures were still adapting, having been risen from a slumber of mysterious origins, old, decrepit elders were nearly petrified by their elongated rest and thus had taken to a gluttonous retribution and plagued most of the human realm with their - for lack of better term - disease. Most would call the time of feverish pain some other sickness, a plague of the dead, an arise of evil, satanic and barbaric with the feral condition most went under during this molestation of change. Maharet, created much sooner by Maman’s vanity and avarice to obtain many daughters, stood by to witness this carnage and felt the first struggles of bloodlust - no matter how cultivated her hunger was under Maman’s tutelage to partake of the purest of essences. But, they were not alone, many other creatures too blended along with the human kind, and for their cavernous hunger, they suffered pillages and consequences and as such, a smear of ebony came with their uttered curse.
However, Maharet, despite various warnings and advertisement against doing so, found a certain enjoyment in making appearances through the critical advancements in time, and always through the creation of a painting or the snip of a photo - though blurred. Perhaps it was her vanity, no amount of lessons could rid her of that sin, but the eternal perspective of her likeness always spurred a sense of desire in her, waking forth a long, dusted amount of lust when she managed to inspire a particular piece of fine, wonderful talent. She admired these beings who, like she, saw the world through different eyes - her perception shadowed and dead, theirs bright and ever lasting. Maman often advised against such admiration, often quoting that human life was vibrant, but also wasting, vanishing like stars and sunbursts. They were eternal, servants to the night, they would last and Maharet never quite understood that lesson until time bled into a dampened deluge of grey and black and before she realized it, centuries had leaped across her eyes in a fickle, slow, blink.
No one had ever told her of this eternity and in her only recalled moment of irrational behavior, the vampire child fled from her creator and disbanded from their family.
Becoming like a flicker of flame, Maharet wove her life seamlessly into the existence of others, she courted lords, she courted ladies, leaving their bed chambers in the night and fed on them, leaving only the whiff of her as a parting gift. She meddled into their lives, almost careless in her immersion and fed on more than her fair share, blood-drunk, she’d say and basked into the near euphoric gluttony she reaped across their hearts. She garnered many names, titles and stories, painting were made and fond memories were whispered of her, a new moniker gracing herself illustrated in the admiration of others.
But as time often proved to her, again and again, this too did not last. Maharet fell into a fitful slumber, sealing herself into a deep state of comatose to waste away her tragic being. Perhaps a bit theatrical, as later those of her ancient family would call her foolish and woeful, Maharet cared not for these sparing details for at the centre of her being pooled all the greys of her life into a weighted stone. She barely acknowledged fellow creatures, figuring them beneath her and so she slept, for how many years, she cannot discern.
This was until the Nyctari family woke her up.
Rousing the Lady in Red from her rest, it produced a cannibalistic slaughter, Maharet’s near mad feeding frenzy sating the hunger of a beast long induced into hibernation. Though viewed as almost taboo, to feed on those of her species, Maharet’s power of blood kept her from succumbing to a bestial insanity associated with cannibalism among their people. So, when the haze of red fled from her vision, they told her in somber words that Maman was dead. Initially surprised that the woman had lived so long, they admitted fleetingly that the ancient being was nearing a petrified state of withering bone and no amount of feeding could stave off her decomposition, much to their dismay when Maman literally was spent into a fine powder in her final hours. Instructions were left in her demise and in such was the demand that Maharet be awoken, for what purpose the Nyctari family was never informed and much to Maharet’s depressing displeasure.
Time has loped by since she feasted on her kith and kin, and when Santa Somabra was pillaged under the reaping of the undead and their mistress, she had attempted to rally her remaining family under a unification to find and reclaim their rule and to end the Canoness. However, lies and secrets crafted avenues far and deep through the vampires, resulting in a betrayal and conspiracy that traced root and bedlam back to Italy. Thus Maharet departed Santa Somabra to attend to these atrocities, leaving behind the Nyctari to the pillaging of the rotting disciples and to become swept up into the turning of power within the city. She tore out the throats of her former associates, she sliced down to their petrified marrow and effectively ended the Nyctarius line that was fostered on slaughtering and killing the only mother and sisters she had known. Through the dismemberment and ferocity that was her retribution, Maharet sired the Nyctarium on the bones and ashen remains of her ancestors, using the dust to cement her new title. She enchanted various vampires into her fold, she adopted thralls of various races and wreathed them in splendor of blood and fornication. Her newly risen empire was of dark and blood and shadows that boiled up from the gloom like tendrils of a great, seductive beast that coiled tight around Italy, France and began teasing into Spain.
Knowing full well that she would, eventually, return to Santa Somabra to reap out the remaining conspirators that saw to Maman's death, and not to mention many others that were exhausted and spent under the betrayals, she summoned a contingent of thralls and followers and crossed the eternal blue of the Atlantic to once again breath in the stench and decay that was the remains of this city. Maharet made her stronghold, first, in the Red Light districts, slinking in slow and with intent and became the proprietor of the Rouge where rumours were purposely leaked that the Lady in Red had returned to Santa Somabra to "purify" her fellow night dwellers. Details of her savagery in Italy had not gone unnoticed, producing this vampire dame as both an enemy and a potential ally with how her reach has grown and extended— she has become what her creator intended her to be.
ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ —
"meet in her aspect and her eyes"
.. The Rouge is Maharet's base of operations and a well visited strip where any and all are welcome through her scarlet doors.
. Maharet doesn't despise the Nyctari or the Nyte Kings, she has contacts weaving in and out of them, but never swears loyalty or intent to any of the factions and often pits the two against one another if such an opportunity arises.
. With her various thralls and those swindled under her enchantment of powerful and potent blood magic, she has a personally selected group that she trusts that she calls her Bien-Aimés.
. With Maharet's age, her ability to imprint and sway those to her favour is considered nearly lethal with her method of suggestion and seduction.
Member
AmongHeroes
CabbageAngel
Antlers
Eddie Brock
AuthorialTheory
Kefka Palazzo
Exit
Mjolnir
Lunamaria Hawke
Altered Tundra
