a different kind of magic

In the world of turbulent Kindred politics, your job as the Archon's assistant was relatively easy; you role as the replacement — hopefully, a temporary one — was intricate enough no one else could fulfill it. Love could take different forms for different people. The adoration and loyalty you felt towards the Shining Star fallen upon your miserable existence were blind, but sincere — not a lot of people could brag about it nowadays. You could, even if there was no one left to support the decisions that lead you here; you did not, still.

But what should the substitute do when faced with the mythical being the outline of which you traced ever since stepping on the path? She calls the man you love her brother, he waited to see her face again for almost two years.

You are Chase Foster. You just want your notebook forgotten God knows where back.

Word count: 12K

we are playing a long chronicle set in modern new york, i'm the storyteller. one of my favorite spcs is vera bouchard, a tremere thaumaturgist, and now i can talk about her without spoiling plot elements for my players, who are also there (hi gals)

it's not her given name. she was born in 50s, raised in brooklyn, lost her parents while she was around eight years old, and fell in with the wrong crowd. she didn't really understand what she was doing - she was helping the big guys, important ones, who can give her money for doing tasks. yes, maybe not nice tasks like setting someone's car on fire, but it was a way to live, and not the worst one. when she was a teenager, she fucked up big time while doing business and went into hiding.

she probably wouldn't last long if some kind of miracle didn't happen to her: she met a man who decided to adopt a starving, scared girl. etienne eshhar said that she reminded him of his missing daughter (she was missing for a while, probably dead already). (she saw the photos, and the girl was a blonde like her, sure, but the similarities pretty much ended here. this is when she became vera eshhar.

etienne gave her the access to the comfortable life and good education. it took time for her to adapt for the new circumstances. she learnt to hide her original accent and to talk like a proper lady. it was difficult, but etienne was a loving father and vera really wanted to learn and to study. she got a degree in biology and was interested in studying genetics.

etienne died from cancer when she was 27. after that, vera joined the local punks: she was a life of the party, drunk, dancing and kissing girls and boys at raves, she argued about politics at bars, she joined protests - for a time, brujah were panning to embrace her. for better or for worse, a tremere sorcerer embraced her first, in 1979.

in an ironic twist of fate, in 1984 vera's sire was executed by his own clan for an alleged treachery of sharing the secrets of thaumaturgy with other clans. she was supposed to die too, but an influential figure gave her a chance to prove her loyalty and her worth to the tremere. beatrice bouchard was an ancilla matriarch and the founder of the house bouchard, famous for their rationalistic (like literally rationalistic, beatrice was from the age of enlightenment) approach to studying and creating new rituals and paths of thaumaturgy. beatrice personally was also famous for taking in 'orphans', fledglings without sires, and vera found herself in the presence of her 'siblings', helena and malakai. vera changed her name again, since she became the part of the house, she started using the surname bouchard.

vera bouchard fought in the battle of new york. under the mentorship of beatrice, she became a very competent sorcerer and used her broad knowledge of rituals to track, trap and weaken the sabbat packs. she gor unlucky once and ended up a captive of a vengelful tzimisce, who took his time to show vera his skill with vicissitude. it traumatized her heavily: vera never really felt safe after this incident, she started experiencing depersonalization, panic attacks and symptoms of ptsd. it didn't help that she diablerized the guy in an uncontrollable state of frenzy.

after the battle of new york ended and camarilla established the city as its domain, beatrice became the regent of one of five tremere chantries, and she sent vera to fill the role of an assistant of another regent, eugenio estevez. the relationship between vera and genie was, to put it mildly, unhealthy. he agreed to keep her secret of amaranth, and vera felt like she couldn't say no to him, especially considering his higher place in the political hierarchy and his ability to destroy her physically or socially without any repercussions. she wasn't really a person anymore, she was genie's assistant, his thrall, his concubine.

nevertheless, vera proceeded exploring the blood sorcery, now driven by fear: she wanted to never feel as powerless as she felt when she was a captive. her frantic research bore fruit, and with the help of genie vera performed the ritual that allowed her to permanently pass the restrictions of her generation, but, of course, with the price. her body, with an exception for her head and hands, is covered in complex pattern of sigils, and she has to wear closed clothes exclusively; sometimes her body treats this spell as a giant wound and the sigils start bleeding. vera also experiences migraines and has to pay close attention to the intergrity of the pattern, because the violation of the magical structure could lead to her just exploding from the inside.

at this point in time vera is a hound (she also has like seven other jobs), she's also a part of the player's coterie and a girlfriend of player's character (another tremere witch).

in the fight with the anarch group, vera exploded a guy with cauldron of blood, lost her humanity and now she's showing more violent tendencies - not like she was a pacifist before! it's hard for her to empathize with humans: she doesn't hurt them for her amusement, but she generally doesn't feel like she needs to connect to the mortal world. why bother? people die, and if you want companionship and crave understanding, you should come to the other kindred, she thinks.

keira, her girlfriend, is a debtor to the house carna, who took advantage of her vulnerable state. keira has to act in favour of house carna for five years, whether she wants it or not, and carna has a way to force keira to serve her - carna has keira's vitae. so, naturally, vera wants to free keira from the fate of an elder's slave, and she is designing the ritual to change keira's true name and consequently the properties of keira's vitae, rendering the sample in the posession of carna useless.

vera also has very complicated relationship with thomas arturo

and here are my characters for @ast1lb3's new chronicle — banu haqim chase foster and his ghoul, gul maheshwaran

chase may be a college drop-out who got into growing weed as a way to earn money, but he dreams of big things and wants to leave an impact on the world. so naturally, when presented with a dead end research project into the secrets of vitae and a ghoul assistant by his newfound sire, chase jumped at the opportunity, and became yet another missing person on the diagram, though there was hardly anyone who would miss him anyway. five years later, chase, along with his coterie, is booted out of atlanta for a series of minor, but annoying transgressions, and so they find their way to montgomery, chase's hometown.

naturally, back at home he is forced to confront all the things he left behind so hastily — the good and the bad.