Anna Demirovna (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
indiscreet) wrote2012-11-24 06:29 pm
indiscreet) wrote2012-11-24 06:29 pm
Entry tags:
( Cape Kore ) Application
[Player information]
Player Name: Degen
Age: 23
E-mail: dreamofophelia@gmail.com
Other characters played at Cape Kore: none
[Character information]
Name: Anna Demirovna, "The Storm-Chased Mistress of the Hunt"
Canon: Vampire: The Requiem (OC); same chron as Mina Barrett
Canon Point: 1932 (same canon point as Mina Barrett)
Age: 19 (physical age) / 24 (actual age)
Appearance: Anna is a 5’4” young woman of Russian descent, appearing to be in her late teens or early twenties, though she tends to favor the use of makeup (dark eyes, scarlet lips) to make herself look more mature. Her hair is black-brown and reaches past her shoulders when loose; however, she often wears it in a low chignon on the side of her head. During her mortal life, she was a dancer, and has the body to prove it: slender, delicate, leanly muscled, small-breasted (though she’s fond of showing off even that tiny bit of cleavage). Because of her vampiric nature, she has unnaturally pale skin (without makeup, unhealthily so). Anna enjoys luxury, and dresses up whenever it is not actively impractical.
However, Anna also has a Fae aspect (it’s a long story; we’ll get there) known as the Huntress. She typically uses glamour to appear as her normal, Kindred (vampire) self, but if she is distracted, or highly emotional (or if she just wants to impress or otherwise reveal herself), her Fae aspect breaks through: her hair crackles with lightning, her skin has a slight sparkle to it (yes, the Twilight jokes have been made, thank you), and the air around her smells like rain (wet earth, the ozone in the air before a storm). This scent is difficult to fully conceal with glamour, and frequently can be detected by those very nearby, like a perfume.
Inventory: Beyond her clothes (leather boots, cuffed pants, and a simple button-up shirt, all of which have been glamoured to resemble elegant hunting-wear) and jewelry (a strand of real pearls and elegant but costume-jewelry earrings), Anna only carries a silver bell on a red ribbon (which is long enough for the bell to be worn around a person's neck). The bell is magic, though: whoever wears it is bound to the Huntress, and only she can remove it.
Abilities: Between the "fay" and the "pire," Anna has kind of a lot of powers, though most of them are not in and of themselves that powerful. STILL, I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE.
Vampire powers:
Standard powers: Kindred can expend the blood they drink to heal themselves and to bolster their physical abilities. Furthermore, their blood, called Vitae, has an extremely addictive quality, and drinking it binds the drinker to Anna (it takes three separate drinks to form the bond, though fewer drinks will still cause the drinker to be positively inclined towards her and more susceptible to her other powers.) Drinking Anna's blood can also, if she (or the drinker) expends the will, transform a mortal human into a ghoul for a month. Ghouls can (with effort) learn vampiric powers and will cease aging for as long as they remain a ghoul.
Special powers:
Majesty: This discipline gives a vampire a sort of supernatural force of personality, which means that Anna can theoretically charm people into doing almost anything she likes. Majesty's powers are also extremely subtle to anyone who doesn't themselves possess the discipline, making it hard to realize, even after the fact, that anything out of the ordinary took place. However, personal safety always trumps Majesty, so she can’t make people risk their lives or maintain her control if they are put in harm’s way…or at least not directly in harm’s way. Being supernatural improves resistance to the power.
In order of increasing strength, Anna can: slightly increase how charming she seems to those with whom she interacts/for whom she performs; make herself seem to be worthy of trusting as a close friend when it comes to revealing secrets (the conversation has to be carefully managed, or she'll be there for hours hearing every detail of the target's life); "entrance" a person into adoring and/or desiring her utterly (lasts a few hours or longer if she's very lucky, but difficult to do more than once a week to the same person); summon someone to her presence; and, with the expenditure of will, cause herself to be so awe-inspiringly impressive to all who perceive her that they cannot conceive of acting against her...unless she acts violently against them first.
Celerity: Vampire super-speed! But Anna is comparatively unpracticed, so she can only speed up a little. When active, Anna can run twice as fast as normal (if she is only running, rather than, say, fighting) and moves faster in a fight (and is thus generally harder to hit). The power uses a lot of blood, though, and doesn't stack with the fae speed described below. (The advantage comes from not risking letting the Huntress out by using her fae powers.)
Vampire weaknesses: Anna is badly harmed by fire and sunlight, and feels an instinctive fear of them. Crosses also badly harm her, but this is a less common weakness. This instinctive fear, as well as strong anger and hunger, can cause her to lose control of her Beast (the predatory will within her) and go into Frenzy, a sort of berserker state. That same Beast causes mortals to instinctively be slightly on edge around her without knowing why. A stake through the heart won't kill her, but will put her in "torpor" until the stake is removed. Finally, she finds it next to impossible to be awake during the day.
Fae powers: The Huntress's powers are arguably stronger than Anna's, but using them risks losing control entirely to the Huntress.
Universal fae powers: All Fae possess the ability form binding Pledges with others. Anna can use these Pledges to empower others (for example with wealth, beauty, or perhaps the ability to see through Fae illusion) so long as she gets something in return (usually some form of alliance, though it could be anything). All Fae also possess the ability to enter the dreams of others and can attempt to manipulate them; however, Anna has no experience with this so the ability is purely theoretical for now. Finally, once in a very great while (once per "story arc," however that's defined), Anna can "incite Bedlam," inducing one of the four primal emotions (desire, wrath, fear, or sorrow) in a crowd of people.
Huntress powers: When accessing her abilities as the Huntress, Anna can summon a magical bow, as well as produce as many magical lightning arrows as she desires. In keeping with the Huntress’s storm theme, she also gains a minor degree of control over and affinity with mist and clouds: not enough to alter the weather, but with some effort she could clear or summon mist.
Additionally, she may summon a smallish pack of dogs, which will help her hunt down a target of her choice. Her abilities also allow her a degree of supernatural speed (effectively the same amount as her vampire speed, but without spending blood for it) – enough to easily keep up with her dogs on foot, though she couldn’t outrun, say, a car. While Anna and her dogs are on a hunt, the laws of gravity are more of a “suggestion” – she can run up the side of building, etc.
Finally, the Huntress is something of a specialist in illusions, allowing Anna to use glamour to change her appearance or, if she wishes, the appearance of others. A bit more out of her control is that, whether she likes it or not, her magic sometimes changes her appearance based on her mood, making her seem more appealing when she is happy, or more frightening when she is distressed.
One particularly specialized application of glamour is to create an illusory second self as a distraction (in battle or otherwise). However, doing that takes a lot of effort, and Anna can only manage it a few times a day.
Fae weaknesses: Cold iron — that is, hand-forged iron — will harm her just as badly as fire and sunlight harm vampires. Also, she cannot expend "glamour" without first harvesting it from mortal emotions. (This is harmless to mortals.) The Huntress herself has two specific banes: scattered breadcrumbs will throw her off her trail, and the sound of church bells is painful or — if she's close enough — harmful to her.
History: words words words!
Before the Fae-who-had-been-the-Queen could take the Huntress title back, though, Anna is brought to Cape Kore.
Personality: The thing to always remember with Anna is the profound discrepancy between the way she presents herself – which might indeed also be understood as the person she would prefer to be – and the mix of insecurities and lingering psychological wounds that defines who she is at her core.
The self that Anna presents to the vast majority of the world – her default mode, if you will – is unabashedly flirty and even sexual; she is open about her choice of career, and eagerly grasps opportunities to taunt those more “prudish” types who are uncomfortable with her apparent lifestyle. This tendency towards a certain degree of crassness – or at least innuendo – among those Anna perceives as her social equals is tempered by a deep respect for authority that has been ingrained in her since childhood by her Tsar-supporting parents. Put simply, Anna believes very strongly that some people are truly Better, and that those in power deserve their positions, and should remain in power. This means that, despite the poverty of her youth, Anna finds it very easy to move among the circles of the social elite: she has no problem pledging her service to powerful figures – especially when she knows that her loyalty will be rewarded with the increased status of which she feels she is worthy (or even, it might be said, owed by the world). She dresses to impress – namely, to show off her fashionably slender body; is stubborn in her loyalties; and loves nothing more than an opportunity to use her sharp tongue to take those who annoy or disrespect her down a peg.
Ideologically, Anna clings to the beliefs that seem to justify her behavior with the same stubborn dogmatism that can define her friendships. Her dislike of communism (or at least those who openly present themselves as Communists, though she is capable of putting aside her prejudices in interest of necessity) is tied to the fact that she sees the beginning of the Communist Revolution in Russia as a sort of first domino that led to her childhood poverty and, in a way, even her disastrous Embrace. Similarly, she clings to her resentment of Pyotr for the double insult of “stealing” the love of her parents and then not being worthy of that love. Anna is vaguely aware, in the back of her mind, of the flaws and hypocrisy of her insistence of blaming Pyotr for (especially) the death of their parents, but that only makes her more determined not to think too hard about the matter, lest she be forced to admit her own guilt. In this area, her alignment with the church of the Lancea Sanctum is invaluable, since it allows Anna to accept as her purpose being a monster and creature of sin on behalf of God. However, since her brother’s murder, she has dealt increasingly poorly with her remorse, in part because of her unrealized desire to mourn him. (TRIGGER WARNING: self harm) And, after the. . .experience with her silver hand [see History], she has a slight tendency to fall back on bits of pain (e.g. digging her nails into her skin) to reassure and focus herself, and a more troubling tendency towards outright self-harm in times of extreme stress and insecurity. (end warning)
What is far less obvious is that about Anna is that she is deeply insecure on a number of levels. The trauma of her Embrace has left her terrified of her own weakness, which means that her flirtatious persona is in part an act: Anna likes the reality of romance, but the reality of sex itself — at least in situations where she isn't confident that she could overpower her partner if truly necessary — triggers her and leaves her terrified. She desires protection (something that her employment by those in power can provide), but even more (though she is far less consciously aware of it) she needs the love that can fill hole of abandonment – by her sire and perceived as by her family – at her core. But because she sees herself as so fundamentally broken (particularly sexually), and because – ideals of the Lancea Sanctum or no – she at the deepest level does not want to be the monster she thinks she has been Damned to be, Anna does not really see herself as worthy of love – at least not as anything other than the perfect socialite she presents herself as being.
Above all, Anna is a deeply passionate, driven person: her tendency for stubborn loyalty and dogmatism come from her essential need for a cause at all times, a purpose to which she can devote her entire existence. The goal she chooses might be self-centered (such as her ballet career, or political power), but without one she feels empty, and the burden of the possibly endlessly supply of time that she has hits her with full force. It is at these brief moments of purposelessness before she latches on to some new cause that Anna is most keenly aware of how unnatural her undead state truly is.
As the Huntress, however, things change. Anna’s Huntress side, when active, brings a confidence and dominance that Anna herself finds intoxicating. For the Huntress – as with any of the True Fae – the world exists to serve her own interests, which largely means her own amusement. She is tempestuous and impatient, and not a little inclined to see all relationships of predator and prey, hunter and hunted. And, of course, she is always, always the hunter.
[Samples]
First Person: dear mun: attempting to talk to a Malkavian who, in an AU, was her employer
Third Person: Anna sample; Huntress sample
Anything Else? nope!
Player Name: Degen
Age: 23
E-mail: dreamofophelia@gmail.com
Other characters played at Cape Kore: none
[Character information]
Name: Anna Demirovna, "The Storm-Chased Mistress of the Hunt"
Canon: Vampire: The Requiem (OC); same chron as Mina Barrett
Canon Point: 1932 (same canon point as Mina Barrett)
Age: 19 (physical age) / 24 (actual age)
Appearance: Anna is a 5’4” young woman of Russian descent, appearing to be in her late teens or early twenties, though she tends to favor the use of makeup (dark eyes, scarlet lips) to make herself look more mature. Her hair is black-brown and reaches past her shoulders when loose; however, she often wears it in a low chignon on the side of her head. During her mortal life, she was a dancer, and has the body to prove it: slender, delicate, leanly muscled, small-breasted (though she’s fond of showing off even that tiny bit of cleavage). Because of her vampiric nature, she has unnaturally pale skin (without makeup, unhealthily so). Anna enjoys luxury, and dresses up whenever it is not actively impractical.
However, Anna also has a Fae aspect (it’s a long story; we’ll get there) known as the Huntress. She typically uses glamour to appear as her normal, Kindred (vampire) self, but if she is distracted, or highly emotional (or if she just wants to impress or otherwise reveal herself), her Fae aspect breaks through: her hair crackles with lightning, her skin has a slight sparkle to it (yes, the Twilight jokes have been made, thank you), and the air around her smells like rain (wet earth, the ozone in the air before a storm). This scent is difficult to fully conceal with glamour, and frequently can be detected by those very nearby, like a perfume.
Inventory: Beyond her clothes (leather boots, cuffed pants, and a simple button-up shirt, all of which have been glamoured to resemble elegant hunting-wear) and jewelry (a strand of real pearls and elegant but costume-jewelry earrings), Anna only carries a silver bell on a red ribbon (which is long enough for the bell to be worn around a person's neck). The bell is magic, though: whoever wears it is bound to the Huntress, and only she can remove it.
Abilities: Between the "fay" and the "pire," Anna has kind of a lot of powers, though most of them are not in and of themselves that powerful. STILL, I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE.
Vampire powers:
Standard powers: Kindred can expend the blood they drink to heal themselves and to bolster their physical abilities. Furthermore, their blood, called Vitae, has an extremely addictive quality, and drinking it binds the drinker to Anna (it takes three separate drinks to form the bond, though fewer drinks will still cause the drinker to be positively inclined towards her and more susceptible to her other powers.) Drinking Anna's blood can also, if she (or the drinker) expends the will, transform a mortal human into a ghoul for a month. Ghouls can (with effort) learn vampiric powers and will cease aging for as long as they remain a ghoul.
Special powers:
Majesty: This discipline gives a vampire a sort of supernatural force of personality, which means that Anna can theoretically charm people into doing almost anything she likes. Majesty's powers are also extremely subtle to anyone who doesn't themselves possess the discipline, making it hard to realize, even after the fact, that anything out of the ordinary took place. However, personal safety always trumps Majesty, so she can’t make people risk their lives or maintain her control if they are put in harm’s way…or at least not directly in harm’s way. Being supernatural improves resistance to the power.
In order of increasing strength, Anna can: slightly increase how charming she seems to those with whom she interacts/for whom she performs; make herself seem to be worthy of trusting as a close friend when it comes to revealing secrets (the conversation has to be carefully managed, or she'll be there for hours hearing every detail of the target's life); "entrance" a person into adoring and/or desiring her utterly (lasts a few hours or longer if she's very lucky, but difficult to do more than once a week to the same person); summon someone to her presence; and, with the expenditure of will, cause herself to be so awe-inspiringly impressive to all who perceive her that they cannot conceive of acting against her...unless she acts violently against them first.
Celerity: Vampire super-speed! But Anna is comparatively unpracticed, so she can only speed up a little. When active, Anna can run twice as fast as normal (if she is only running, rather than, say, fighting) and moves faster in a fight (and is thus generally harder to hit). The power uses a lot of blood, though, and doesn't stack with the fae speed described below. (The advantage comes from not risking letting the Huntress out by using her fae powers.)
Vampire weaknesses: Anna is badly harmed by fire and sunlight, and feels an instinctive fear of them. Crosses also badly harm her, but this is a less common weakness. This instinctive fear, as well as strong anger and hunger, can cause her to lose control of her Beast (the predatory will within her) and go into Frenzy, a sort of berserker state. That same Beast causes mortals to instinctively be slightly on edge around her without knowing why. A stake through the heart won't kill her, but will put her in "torpor" until the stake is removed. Finally, she finds it next to impossible to be awake during the day.
Fae powers: The Huntress's powers are arguably stronger than Anna's, but using them risks losing control entirely to the Huntress.
Universal fae powers: All Fae possess the ability form binding Pledges with others. Anna can use these Pledges to empower others (for example with wealth, beauty, or perhaps the ability to see through Fae illusion) so long as she gets something in return (usually some form of alliance, though it could be anything). All Fae also possess the ability to enter the dreams of others and can attempt to manipulate them; however, Anna has no experience with this so the ability is purely theoretical for now. Finally, once in a very great while (once per "story arc," however that's defined), Anna can "incite Bedlam," inducing one of the four primal emotions (desire, wrath, fear, or sorrow) in a crowd of people.
Huntress powers: When accessing her abilities as the Huntress, Anna can summon a magical bow, as well as produce as many magical lightning arrows as she desires. In keeping with the Huntress’s storm theme, she also gains a minor degree of control over and affinity with mist and clouds: not enough to alter the weather, but with some effort she could clear or summon mist.
Additionally, she may summon a smallish pack of dogs, which will help her hunt down a target of her choice. Her abilities also allow her a degree of supernatural speed (effectively the same amount as her vampire speed, but without spending blood for it) – enough to easily keep up with her dogs on foot, though she couldn’t outrun, say, a car. While Anna and her dogs are on a hunt, the laws of gravity are more of a “suggestion” – she can run up the side of building, etc.
Finally, the Huntress is something of a specialist in illusions, allowing Anna to use glamour to change her appearance or, if she wishes, the appearance of others. A bit more out of her control is that, whether she likes it or not, her magic sometimes changes her appearance based on her mood, making her seem more appealing when she is happy, or more frightening when she is distressed.
One particularly specialized application of glamour is to create an illusory second self as a distraction (in battle or otherwise). However, doing that takes a lot of effort, and Anna can only manage it a few times a day.
Fae weaknesses: Cold iron — that is, hand-forged iron — will harm her just as badly as fire and sunlight harm vampires. Also, she cannot expend "glamour" without first harvesting it from mortal emotions. (This is harmless to mortals.) The Huntress herself has two specific banes: scattered breadcrumbs will throw her off her trail, and the sound of church bells is painful or — if she's close enough — harmful to her.
History: words words words!
Before the Fae-who-had-been-the-Queen could take the Huntress title back, though, Anna is brought to Cape Kore.
Personality: The thing to always remember with Anna is the profound discrepancy between the way she presents herself – which might indeed also be understood as the person she would prefer to be – and the mix of insecurities and lingering psychological wounds that defines who she is at her core.
The self that Anna presents to the vast majority of the world – her default mode, if you will – is unabashedly flirty and even sexual; she is open about her choice of career, and eagerly grasps opportunities to taunt those more “prudish” types who are uncomfortable with her apparent lifestyle. This tendency towards a certain degree of crassness – or at least innuendo – among those Anna perceives as her social equals is tempered by a deep respect for authority that has been ingrained in her since childhood by her Tsar-supporting parents. Put simply, Anna believes very strongly that some people are truly Better, and that those in power deserve their positions, and should remain in power. This means that, despite the poverty of her youth, Anna finds it very easy to move among the circles of the social elite: she has no problem pledging her service to powerful figures – especially when she knows that her loyalty will be rewarded with the increased status of which she feels she is worthy (or even, it might be said, owed by the world). She dresses to impress – namely, to show off her fashionably slender body; is stubborn in her loyalties; and loves nothing more than an opportunity to use her sharp tongue to take those who annoy or disrespect her down a peg.
Ideologically, Anna clings to the beliefs that seem to justify her behavior with the same stubborn dogmatism that can define her friendships. Her dislike of communism (or at least those who openly present themselves as Communists, though she is capable of putting aside her prejudices in interest of necessity) is tied to the fact that she sees the beginning of the Communist Revolution in Russia as a sort of first domino that led to her childhood poverty and, in a way, even her disastrous Embrace. Similarly, she clings to her resentment of Pyotr for the double insult of “stealing” the love of her parents and then not being worthy of that love. Anna is vaguely aware, in the back of her mind, of the flaws and hypocrisy of her insistence of blaming Pyotr for (especially) the death of their parents, but that only makes her more determined not to think too hard about the matter, lest she be forced to admit her own guilt. In this area, her alignment with the church of the Lancea Sanctum is invaluable, since it allows Anna to accept as her purpose being a monster and creature of sin on behalf of God. However, since her brother’s murder, she has dealt increasingly poorly with her remorse, in part because of her unrealized desire to mourn him. (TRIGGER WARNING: self harm) And, after the. . .experience with her silver hand [see History], she has a slight tendency to fall back on bits of pain (e.g. digging her nails into her skin) to reassure and focus herself, and a more troubling tendency towards outright self-harm in times of extreme stress and insecurity. (end warning)
What is far less obvious is that about Anna is that she is deeply insecure on a number of levels. The trauma of her Embrace has left her terrified of her own weakness, which means that her flirtatious persona is in part an act: Anna likes the reality of romance, but the reality of sex itself — at least in situations where she isn't confident that she could overpower her partner if truly necessary — triggers her and leaves her terrified. She desires protection (something that her employment by those in power can provide), but even more (though she is far less consciously aware of it) she needs the love that can fill hole of abandonment – by her sire and perceived as by her family – at her core. But because she sees herself as so fundamentally broken (particularly sexually), and because – ideals of the Lancea Sanctum or no – she at the deepest level does not want to be the monster she thinks she has been Damned to be, Anna does not really see herself as worthy of love – at least not as anything other than the perfect socialite she presents herself as being.
Above all, Anna is a deeply passionate, driven person: her tendency for stubborn loyalty and dogmatism come from her essential need for a cause at all times, a purpose to which she can devote her entire existence. The goal she chooses might be self-centered (such as her ballet career, or political power), but without one she feels empty, and the burden of the possibly endlessly supply of time that she has hits her with full force. It is at these brief moments of purposelessness before she latches on to some new cause that Anna is most keenly aware of how unnatural her undead state truly is.
As the Huntress, however, things change. Anna’s Huntress side, when active, brings a confidence and dominance that Anna herself finds intoxicating. For the Huntress – as with any of the True Fae – the world exists to serve her own interests, which largely means her own amusement. She is tempestuous and impatient, and not a little inclined to see all relationships of predator and prey, hunter and hunted. And, of course, she is always, always the hunter.
[Samples]
First Person: dear mun: attempting to talk to a Malkavian who, in an AU, was her employer
Third Person: Anna sample; Huntress sample
Anything Else? nope!