#cor.intro

Growing up a little weird's hard not to do when you're in the system. Ren bounced around his whole life, carrying that heavy question of 'why'.

Why is my life like this?

Why wasn't I good enough to keep?

Why can't I be happy with the way things are?

That heavy burden of why haunted Wren through his early life, bouncing from from family to family in an overworked and undersupported system until, sometime in his teenage years, a rough patch with the Middlesex Police landed him a lucky strike on the anvil of fortune, and connected Wren with the Matos family. It was rocky at first; an unruly teenager with a streak of anti-authority and an inability to really feel safe and steady was, at first, an ill-fit for the couple - but Ren's would-be father saw something of himself in the rough-cut child, and though their struggles and crises were many, both Ren and the Matos managed to find a happy equilibrium.

When Ren graduated High School, he set his sights on art, something that had carried him through the darker parts of his youth. This found him hopping the river from New Jersey to the big Apple, where he found a different kind of freedom, submersing himself in the wild world of New York City Art school.

At NYU he met Aria Boughton, a fellow artist, who had invited him into SHADES, a club for queer students of color. The two became fast friends and confidants, and before too long, they were practically family. They partied together, studied together, bounced work off each other, and confided in each other.

It was like suddenly Wren seemingly had finally gotten the wheels of his plane off the ground - he had a family, a back home, and a future - but his time spent away from home, with Aria, and sucking up all the city culture he could made him realize that that nagging question was still there, still lurking around corners or in the mirror or on the ceiling of his bedroom at night

Why, if everything's so good, does nothing feel right? At first, he'd had a crush on Aria - something that he'd warded off ever being something to press on, but even after those feelings had been put to bed, there was something else - something more than Aria, something that lingered in the back of Wren's mind. It wasn't so much attraction as... well. Envy.

And that envy scared him - because Wren had eyes, saw how the world was, saw how people were, even in places that were supposed to be safe. So he buried it. Being queer was enough. His friends, his family. They were okay with queer. No reason to get more specific. No reason to risk losing things.

And then graduation happened, and after graduation, well... life. Freelance at is hard to make a living on, so Wren becomes something of a jack-of-all trades. Art commissions, murals, freelance design work. He plies a love of music into a DJ Persona, and earns some cash there too. With how expensive the city is though, it feels like treading water and burning increasingly expensive fuel.

Then Aria leaves - the city's choking her out. He understands - maybe not in the same way, but he understands. She's heading for the West Coast. He's going to stick it out here. They both hug and cry and get all snotty, and then just like that, she's gone.

He'd never really had a friend like her before, and it felt like he'd surely never have one like her again. Eventually, the expense of the city outpaces his means, and he has to go back home; his father offers him work, and it's good, steady money, but Wren hates it. Hating it makes him feel ungrateful. Feeling ungrateful makes him feel like shit. Feeling like shit makes him angry, and feeling angry makes him realize that he can't find the one thing he wants most - the answer to that stupid question of why.

Eventually, Wren gets a letter. It's addressed to him, from some place out in Oregon - Port Leiry. It's an call to some sort of art collective; they'd seen his work online, remembered him from school, and wanted to extend the invitation. The letter sits in his room for weeks before he gets another one - one with no return address that claims to be from a member of his birth family. It says that it has to remain a secret, that he mustn't tell a soul, but it too calls him to that same weird town - Port Leiry, Oregon.

He packs a bag, all of his savings, and he high-tails it that night on a Red-Eye, leaving only an apologetic note for his parents.

When he gets there, he decides to take up the art collective on their invitation, and for a while that's a decent enough place to crash, but then a freak Hurricane smashes the place to bits, forcing him to find work and a new place to stay. He gets a job at a record store, and starts trying to find the source of the letter that says he might find his family out here.

And then Aria walks back into his life, and drops some info that leaves him with about a thousand more questions.

Biography: (tw: child murder)

Memories of the before are muddled. Too sharp and bright against the walls that have been erected in her mind. There are flashes of laughter, the glimpse of a smile, twin voices giggling out in glee. Leone watches impassively as the images float by in her mind's eye, ignoring the muted twinge that she has become so familiar with. There are meaningless names attached to the faces, no emotions stirred other than a mild annoyance at their persistence. But like everything else, that too fades away and Leone presses onward.

July 2014 - Boston

She stares at the now-blank screen of her phone, hating how she is already familiar with the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. In the other room, she can hear her daughters chattering excitedly together as they plan their outfits for their birthday dinner. Thirteen years old, officially teenagers. It was a big deal and Aurelia knew that.

Leone knows that the U.S. marines don't give a rat's ass that their daughters are expecting their mother home for their shared birthday festivities, something that hasn't happened in years because of her wife's tours. The girls had been nine then, and both were adamant that this one was the start of their young adult lives. She hadn't wanted to get their hopes up, and made Aurelia swear left and right that she would be back by then before she began to plan. Now they're one day out and Aurelia isn't coming back until the day is over. It's not her fault. She doesn't control the airlines or the weather, but it doesn't break the pattern she's created so far.

There is no time to be furious, not now, not when she has to break the news to her babies. Leone's poker face is abysmal however, and they see it written all over her face when they tumble into the kitchen. Dessa's scowl mirrors that of her Aurelia's, and Leone would laugh if the situation wasn't what it was. Tiana's eyes are already filling with tears, and she quickly sweeps both of her daughters into a bear hug, kissing them both firmly on top of their heads. "We'll still have fun ourselves," she declares. "And we'll take plenty of pictures to make your mother jealous of what she's missing." She prods at their sides until they are both smiling once more, but the enthusiasm is dimmed.

Her sister is the one who suggests that she take that night off, promising to watch the girls while Leone spoiled herself with a nice dinner and a glass of wine at the bar, before going back to the dutiful expectations of a wife and mother. She lets herself relax in a way she hasn't since before she had had the girls. When a woman offers to buy her a drink, she should say no, should pull out the wedding ring that is burning a hole in her pocket, but instead she smiles and acquiesces. The stranger is charming and polite, and Leone doesn't remember the last time she felt like someone had seen her like this. Like someone to be desired rather than someone who knew when the next dentist appointment was. They talk until last call, and she doesn't want this night to end.

She willingly invites the devil into her home and marriage bed, while her daughters sleep in the next room and her wife is on a return flight home. Leone's last moments as a human are one of betraying her oaths in the most unforgivable way. Her voice is stolen from her when she opens her eyes and sees the black-red gaze of a monster, telling her to be quiet so she doesn't wake her children. Her screams are silent as the vampire bites into her throat and drains her dry. She is ravenous when she awakes an hour later, paler than she has ever been, but the woman is gone, making Leone wonder whether she had ever been there at all. She is halfway to the kitchen when she smells the blood, and her feet move before she can stop herself.

She learns that night that her daughters have roughly 0.8 gallons of blood each. Dessa's head has been torn clean off her body while she had crushed Tiana's tiny arms as she fed. By the time her bloodlust subsided, her babies had been broken beyond repair, their final birthday gift from the woman who bore them. There wasn't a conscious decision to turn it all off, and she hadn't even known that was an option. It was simply her mind's instinct to protect her from the horror she had brought upon herself. She feels nothing when her wife returns to the bloodbath in their home, impassive despite Aurelia's grief and horror. Leone doesn't know if it's hatred or fear in the other woman's eyes as she leaves the ashes of her old life behind.

A decade is nothing to a vampire. The years pass in a blur of blood and chaos as Leone runs away from anything that could stir emotions in her dead heart. She learns to thrive among the most ruthless of her peers, unbothered by those pesky feelings that seem to rule the rest of them. Everything she has learned about being a vampire has been trial by fire, and she has emerged like a phoenix.

Port Leiry becomes something like a new home base, though she is constantly moving in and out of the city on a whim. She builds a network of eyes and ears, not seeking money or power, but identifying monsters who would hurt the most vulnerable. Then Leone tracks them down and shows them the face of a true monster.

Behind her lies a trail of bloody breadcrumbs, and they all lead back to Port Leiry.

Plot Ideas

Show Her Around - Leone has been ‘living’ in Port Leiry for almost ten years at this point, but she hasn’t spent any significant amount of time in the city since her work takes her all over the world. She’s a vampire who has been operating without her humanity for over ten years, and frankly isn’t even aware that it’s a switch that exists. She’s here for a good time AND a long time.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished - Leone has spent the last ten or so years roaming about the world and enacting a sort of justice that she believes to be delivered, particularly towards those who would wrong children. However, she is brutal and savage in her actions and has almost certainly left behind witnesses, perhaps even the children she saved.

Connections

ORIGINS

name: dr. selene calder

age: thirty-two

sexuality: bisexual

creative touchpoints: chronos (hades ii, ambitious time witch). moira mactaggert (x-men). natasha romanoff (marvel, fighter ballerina trope). dominika egorova (yes that character from that meh movie ‘red sparrow’, but it’s the fighter ballerina trope’ here as well). caine wise (from jupiter ascending? i’ve never seen jupiter ascending, but i hear that this character has a similar ability - to see a few seconds into the future. guess i gotta watch jupiter ascending). the apathetic time traveller trope. exhausted genius trope. protege who just won’t give up trope. more machine than man trope. 

alignment: true neutral, scooting towards neutral evil

species: witch (divination, time, can see five seconds into the future, always)

hometown: london, england

affiliation: circle of augury

occupation: principal ballerina, protege to tetsuya miyazaki (and that shit is a full time job on its own)

family members of note: n/a

BACKSTORY

GERMINATE — Richmond & Battersea | Ages 0-8

You begin in Richmond, raised beneath Georgian cornices, cricket-field hush, and the quiet vigilance of the Circle of Augury, your family’s diviner-coven. Your mother’s parlor is an orphanage for clocks; every tick pronounces your inheritance: absence. You listen to antique clocks until their ticking becomes the first language of your magic.

At three, they ferry you across the river to Battersea’s Royal Academy of Dance—tiny studio, high windows, the smell of rosin and rain. Every plié prints your birthright on polished wood. You discover that a plié is just a second folding, and a relevé is a second released.

SPROUT — Edgeware, Clerkenwell & Richmond Park | Ages 9-13

Mornings: the red-brick halls of North London Collegiate School in Edgeware—Latin roots, calculus seeds, prized uniforms. You memorize proofs in the margins of poetry, turning academics into choreography for the mind.

Afternoons: District Line south to the Central School of Ballet in Clerkenwell—ceilings fan-high, pianos forever mid-chord. You trade sweat for certainty, carving grace into muscle the way cartographers carve coasts.

Weekends: uniform traded for leotard at White Lodge, Richmond Park, where the Royal Ballet School Junior Associates drill port de bras beneath deer-watched oaks. Here your intuition first flares: a stumble foretold, a reprimand fore-felt. You learn the deer in Richmond Park move a heartbeat before the wind, and you copy them.

STEM — White Lodge Dormitories | Ages 14-17

Full-time residency inside that 18th-century manor—dorm beds under cracked plaster frescos. GCSEs by lantern light, Oxford-trained tutors visiting from Magdalen to cram differential equations into your sleepless skull. Foresight sharpens: one second, two. 

Seventeen: the mis-plotted salvation in a Richmond kitchen—broken glass, arterial bloom—your mother dying because you trusted mathematics over mystery. Grief roots deep; certainty curdles. You miscalculate one shard of glass and inherit the echo of your mother’s last breath.

BRANCH — Covent Garden & Camden | Ages 17-24

Daylight onstage at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden—you, an apprentice carved in spotlight.

Nightfall lectures at Birkbeck, University of London in Bloomsbury—physics chalk dust, streetlamp gold. You balance particle physics on the edge of midnight lectures and let your future-sight bloom between equations.

Home: a cramped Camden Town flat above a jazz bar, walls pulsing with strangers’ trumpets. You fall asleep to trumpet solos, certain syncopation can teach time new tricks.

At twenty, you transfer to Imperial College London in South Kensington; your lab badge reads Centre for Fundamental Physics. Between Piccadilly stops you annotate futures, stretching vision to five seconds. You split atoms of causality in sterile labs, coaxing four whole seconds of tomorrow into your palms.

BLOOM — South Kensington & Covent Garden | Ages 25-29

Doctoral work in Imperial’s Blackett Laboratory—cryogenic hum, lasers threading midnight air. You watch lasers tremble and wonder if the universe shivers when it notices you watching back.

Evenings you crown the stage as Principal Ballerina back in Covent Garden, pointe shoes bleeding through satin. You swirl through Swan Lake and hear the audience gasp on cue—because you cued them.

Twenty-nine: dissertation defended—Temporal Embodiment and the Limits of Human Perception in Accelerated Systems—inside an oak-paneled room off Queen’s Gate; applause rings like distant thunder. You answer each question three beats early, letting professors believe they interrupted you by accident.

TRANSPLANT — Port Leiry | Age 30-Present

You trade London’s tube map for Port Leiry’s salt-slick streets. Goju Martial Arts smells of cedar and sea-spray. Dawn drills of wind-stepped kata teach you how air denies prediction. Dusk finds you experimenting in alleyway cafés, nudging strangers’ fortunes like threads through a loom. You chase the wind until it turns and chases you, testing whether prophecy can break a gale.

Then rumor: the Voiceless stalk your mentor. Memory of a Richmond kitchen ignites. You chart defenses along cobblestones, weaving five-second halos into traps of perfect causality. This time the pattern will hold.

THE FOLD — How Your Magic Works

Time is not a river to you; it is origami—white paper that blossoms into infinite creases the instant you look. Probabilities hover like translucent petals, each edge a glowing contour. A choice flickers, and dozens of silhouettes overlap: the step she might take, the word he might say, the bullet bending left instead of right. You taste futures the way sommeliers taste oak—notes of sorrow, sparks of triumph, metallic after-scents of danger. You pluck the filament you prefer and tug; moments rearrange themselves, obedient as silk on a loom. Every tug, though, leaves a static sting—reminder of glass once misjudged, the blood price of imprecision. So you fold and refold until the paper threatens to tear, listening for destiny’s heartbeat under your palm.

FRUITION — Everywhere Time Bends | Now

You stand poised between heartbeat and horizon. From Kensington lecture halls to Port Leiry docks, the map is stitched inside you—pivot point where ballet meets physics, prophecy meets will. A young god’s first lesson is to break what she loves; her final vow is never to mismeasure the heart again. You thread the world on invisible wire, tug once, and watch destinies rearrange like beads on a string.

Step. Turn.London, Port Leiry, the yet-unwritten world—all sway as you pull the strings.

WANTED CONNECTIONS  —

AUGURY - Coven connects from here or abroad

TRAIN - Give me someone for her to train with, now that she’s learned about the Voiceless, your girl wants to fuck them up for evening thinking about coming after Tetsuya 

PUPPET - Give this girl someone to practice her magic on, she wants to try mapping out probabilities 

TROUBLE - Give her trouble. Open to interpretation

BASICS

Name: Julieta Yazdani

Nickname: Jul, Juls

Age: appears 22 / actually 312

Sexuality: chaotic bisexual ( threat )

Species: vampire

Affiliation: reardon

Hometown: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Occupation: Nepo baby in her father’s plays/ballets, serial killer

Relationship Status: married ( open connection )

Personality Traits: ruthless, vicious, possessive, vindictive, loyal, mercurial, ambitious, charming

Character Inspo: Lady Macbeth, Amy Elliot Dunne, Margo Hanson

Aesthetic: Blood-soaked divinity; empires in freefall and she’s dancing in the ruin; a whisper of tulle across a darkened stage; I am my mother’s child – I’ll love you till your breathing stops; a dainty despot atop a makeshift throne.

HISTORY

All you know is godhood, raised as you were by immortal beings – human life is fleeting thing, a temporary situation because for whatever purpose would two vampires raise a child if not to eventually turn her? Or so you spend much of your adolescence believing. Mehrzād, your father, rescues you from nothingness; Nisha, your mother, is mercurial at best as much as you idolize her. You are his beloved pet and you do everything you can to please him. Your mother is more difficult, even as you try to do everything she tells you. There are days when she holds you close, teaches you the secret to controlling men; and others when she will not look at you, will not acknowledge your existence.  You love them both, you worship them as deities walking upon the earth and wait until the day you can join.

But here’s the thing – no one, not even your father, has ever officially said they will turn you. It's an oversight on their part, you think, what other possible reason could they have for keeping you around and investing so much in you? But the lack of conversation about it, the way they almost seem to steer away from the topic is unnerving. And so you start to form other plans – if they won’t turn you themselves, then you will simply find a vampire who will.

You’re twenty-two, engaged to be married to the son of an aging duke – a real catch you think. But something is wrong – your parents are fighting and your mother leaves in a rush of indignation and fury. They’ve left you out of this fight, speaking in a language you’ve yet to learn – but surely will, one day, given the sheer amount of time existing within eternity. You play the expected part, reading in the library and waiting for the storm to pass.

Your father is in the doorway, rage radiating off them in waves. You’ve not got enough time to react, to speak, to show concern before he’s rushing towards you. One hand grips the back of your head, his teeth flash as he bites into his other wrist, forcing their blood into her mouth with an alarming violence. You don’t know enough to ask. You don’t know enough to resist when he grips your face and snaps your neck.

You die and you think you might have been happy.

You wake up immortal. He gifts you a gorgeous young playwright ( not as good as your father, of course ) and you drain the man dry. Your mother comes back to the surprise of your new divinity and playacts her excitement far better than you can yet determine. It doesn’t matter – because now everything is perfect.

You’ve got the family of your dreams – and the immortality and godhood to back it up. But what’s the point of power and divinity if you do nothing with it? Mehrzād is content with their plays, but you want more – and so you start to meddle with the lives of those poor humans who find themselves within your crosshairs. You’re quite good at this, having learned all the motions of feminine subservience from your mother whilst taking easily to manipulation and adaptation that are your father’s gifts.

Empires rise and fall under your dark eyes. You revel in the final days of the court of Catherine the Great, your very first foray into political chaos. From here it only grows. Your family moves around every decade – and you align your exploits with whatever home Mehrzād chooses, always eager for parental approval. You don’t forget the lessons of your mother – Nisha tells you all the ways to be a pleasing and obedient wife. But you were raised by gods, then turned into one yourself, gifted your father’s blood – so the men she finds for you as husbands seem to fall short of your expectations. You leave a trail of tragic accidents and emptied accounts and titles in your wake – still somewhat foolishly seeking the true love of your parents.

One night they go to the theater. You’re the prima of the ballet and performing a street away. You think nothing of it at the time, in fact, you’ve wanted to see this show for yourself. It's only when the sun rises and they’ve yet to return that you start to worry. One night turns into three – and there’s no word from any of their contacts. So you follow the trail and find the alleyway that reeks of your father’s blood. Everything changes.

You’ve never been alone before. Sure – you’ve gone off to different parts of the world on your own little political missions; but he’s always been there as a home base and resource, no matter what end she perused. And now there’s nothing – no one left. You might lose it, for just a bit. There might be atrocities committed in the name of finding him, terrible things that you do, justified by his loss.

But also – you thrive. If there was ever a time to watch empires fall it’s now – and you’re there at every climatic turn. This is your favorite part, lurking in the background, playing in the peripherals, dancing just out of sight. You have seen so many empires fall in such a short amount of time and been there to whisper in the ears of so many deeply entangled in the mess. Your father would be proud of you.

You find your future husband in Madrid, the chaos befalling the death of their long-lived dictator calls to you both, like calls to like. This is your native tongue but not your native land - nor his. He tells you of his clan, of Buenos Aires and you fell and echo of memory through all your wild days, your mad existence. You tell him of your father, whispered confessions carefully curated to make a man feel as if he's learnt the true heart of you. You follow him across the sea and back to the land of your birth. It's a profoundly chaotic and violent time - outside agitators far worse than yourselves seek destruction and subjugation. ( An important caveat - you've always loved chaos and sought tension, but never the total suppression or destruction of a population. ) The leader of his clan is weak, so ancient and mired in patterns that you think they've sat this same throne as long as you've been alive, brittle bones like roots in this land that was never really theirs.

It's easy enough to convince your beloved to kill the so-called King. His brute strength and inclination towards violence with which he navigates the subsequent challenges to his rule are impressive. But he would be nothing without you at his side - a gentle touch on the arm, intimate secrets whispered behind a delicate hand into willing ears - he wears the Reardon crown but you hold the power. Your MacBeth is a willing one, to use the parlance of your father, and you can play devoted, dutiful wife just as prettily as your mother taught you. But anyone who knows anything knows you're the swiftest way to have a request heard, the one most likely to tip the scales one way or another.

You're happy, or something close to it when your husband's devoted lieutenants report back rumors of an ancient vampire held by hunters. And you know it is your father, your maker just as you know yourself. When you find him there is no mercy. Months spent verifying the location and the way it’s guarded. These darling baby hunters have no idea what they are dealing with when you decide to make you attack – it's as brutal as it is quick. You keep enough of them alive to replenish you father's strength, then bring him back to your home to recover. He's so proud of how far you've climbed - and for a bit you both live your own intersecting lives. Until your father tells you of the rumors, confirming those you've heard of some wild magic that will give you back the sun. Until your father tells you they've found her - your mother, alive and well and seemingly fine without you both. And so you follow your father, a queen embarking on a quest to some forgotten town in search of the impossible.

WANTED PLOTS

FRIENDS – she’s been around for 300+ years and we all know it's a small world

LOVERS – honestly out here begging for the one that got away – could be a vamp or any other entity that picked up on the fact that at the end of the day Julieta is always going to do what serves her father’s best interest followed by her own best interest.

HUSBAND - Julieta has fully manipulated and encouraged him into taking power from the former leader of the latam/south american branch of Reardon. They are obviously a vampire and very physically strong, imposing, and good at violence which is how they gained and maintained power with Julieta constantly in his ear. She's playing the dutiful wife but also very much a power in her own right, moving through the shadows and nominally deferring to him but gently pushing her will and wants. He would see her as a partner, maybe aware somewhat of the ways in which he's been manipulated ( or not ) - but she's got more of a strategic mind and plays the long game while she's more brawn and brute strength. If he shows up in Port Leiry, something bad has happened to the Reardon branch in Buenos Aires, or perhaps he's trusted the wrong ( or maybe right? ) person to keep watch over their kingdom/clan as he comes to find his wife. ( please come find wife!!! )

ORIGINS: 

name: nicolás serrano

age: twenty-six

alignment: chaotic evil, there is no two ways about this 

species: hunter 

hometown: port leiry

sexuality: bisexual

affiliation: the brotherhood till he dies, and fam, that might be pretty soon with the way this man lives his life 

creative touchpoints: jason todd, harley quinn, tom sawyer, peter pan, and if i said ODYSSEYUS CIRCA THE ILIAD THEN WHAT, cerberus the guardian of hell 

occupation: employee of the aviary gun store 

family members of note: if you’re brotherhood then you’re a bro. everyone else can choke! 

BACKSTORY:

PSYCHOPATHY IN SEVEN SYMPTOMS - THE SERRANO FILE

1 ▸ GRANDIOISE NARRATIVE DISORDER

(aka “Of course the thunderstorm was my birth announcement, duh.”)

Tell Nico the universe doesn’t revolve around him and he’ll grin, lean back, and start rotating the room. Since diapers he’s treated reality like a choose-your-own-demolition comic: panel one, lightning hits the crib; panel two, baby Nico coos “try harder.” So when the Brotherhood’s door-kickers found a one-year-old booby-trapping his playroom, he didn’t feel “rescued.” He felt summoned.

Snatched from the wreckage by Brotherhood hunters, his parents ghosted out by something with claws and monster eyes. The vacancy that swap carved in his chest still crackles—an ember he can’t shake loose. His creed: “Main-character energy or spontaneous combustion, whichever comes first.”

2 ▸ ZERO AFFECT MIRROR

(raised by a crowd, reflected by none)

No mom, no dad, just a rotating cast of grizzled mentors whose parenting style was 30% ballistics and 70% black coffee. Nico studied them like reruns, then bootlegged their best lines. Sympathy? Smile like Sergeant Mule-Kick. Sarcasm? Steal Captain Side-Eye’s eyebrow quirk. Tears? Never tested; the Brotherhood doesn’t do wet work that way.

Internally he’s radio silent; externally he’s a jukebox of borrowed emotions. One minute heart-wrenching sincerity, next minute dead-eyed apathy—needle scratch, new track. Brotherhood recruits say, “Wow, Nico really gets me.” Nico signs back, “Totally (who are you again?).” Emotional authenticity is for civilians and fruit salad; he prefers steel and stage lighting.

3 ▸ IMPULSE WORSHIP

(boy meets love, boy drop-kicks the brakes)

Somewhere between improvised rocket sleds and rooftop molotov cocktails, Nico tasted the high-proof cocktail called love. It wasn’t gentle or gradual; it detonated—red smoke and ringing ears—stamping a shape into his ribcage he’s never managed to sand down. He main-lined the sensation the way other people breathe. Stole city skylines for moonlit rendezvous, tagged rooftops with neon hearts, fired bottle rockets that spelled their initials because Romeo never thought big enough.

When the lover ran—grief, terror, plain survival instinct—Nico’s pulse red-lined. Rejection translated directly to MORE GAS. He doubled the stunts, tripled the risk, and torched every street that still smelled like their cologne. Lesson branded into bone: affection is a collision you schedule yourself. Ever since, raw impulse is his holy scripture; hesitation is blasphemy. If the angel on his shoulder whispers “maybe slow down,” Nico tears off its wings and repurposes them.

4 ▸ SENSORY REDLINING

(one witch, one tongue, zero speed limits)

Fifteen. He leapt a salt ring, got tongue-napped by an elegant sociopathic witch with excellent manicure game. Poof—his tongue gone. Shock lasted half a beat; then colors spiked, sounds weaponized, skin turned into an over-amped car alarm. Most folks would faint. Nico got better.

Wordless, he invented Serrano-sign—half gang tag, half interpretive stab dance—and snagged a sketchy mind-voice pendant that crackles like broken radio. When it glitches, he carves sentences into drywall, or forearms, whichever’s closer. Losing speech didn’t hush him; it uncuffed him. Now every thought arrives raw and jagged straight into your cortex: “Hi, welcome to my TED Talk on Screaming.”

5 ▸ MORAL COLORBLINDNESS

(Brotherhood = technicolor, everything else = grayscale targets)

Morality for Nico is a one-bit graphic: Brotherhood pixels glow neon; the rest could be static for all he cares. He’ll rescue a rookie he hates because family, then leave an entire apartment block to burn because not family. Ask him about collateral damage and he tilts his head like you just questioned gravity.

He does love—fiercely, protectively, violently—but only inside that ring of neon. The supernatural stole his parents; the Brotherhood filled the vacancy. Anyone threatening that math is pre-approved for liquidation. Ammo’s expensive; your life is cheaper.

6 ▸ STRATEGIC SADISM

(classes now in session—dissection tools provided)

Nico doesn’t hunt; he hosts field trips. Newly minted hunters join for “extended learning,” which translates to: busting through windows, zip-tying nightmares for close-up study, pop-quizzing rookies while the monster is still twitching.

Educational highlights include:

“Map That Artery” — label spurting veins before they stop.

“Fear Is Just Data” — Nico fires live rounds near trainees’ ears; if they flinch, next quiz is closer.

“Group Project” — everyone gets a scalpel and a stopwatch; teamwork grades curve toward brutality.

The cruelty is calibrated; the syllabus written in blood because red ink fades too quickly. Command sanctions the curriculum—casualty rates plummet among hunters, spike among monsters. Everyone passes or bleeds trying.

7 ▸ CHARM OFFENSIVE

(team mascot, chaos DJ, walking liability)

You’d think constant mayhem would sour morale. Nope. Nico is the Brotherhood’s living meme—part hype-man, part demolition derby clown. He zip-lines into meetings wielding glitter bombs. He programs the gun range coffeemaker to play “3OH!3” and dispense espresso spiked with holy water.

Even the brass chuckle (nervously) because recruitment numbers spike every time he uploads a hunt highlight reel: Nico riding a ghoul like a surfboard, flipping the devil horns, hearts doodled on screen. The Brotherhood's HR ulcer would throb, but they don't have an HR department.

EPILOGUE ▸ BANG, GIGGLE, RELOAD

Nicolás Serrano is TNT packed in a clown car: multicolored, music blaring, fuse already lit. He lives three inches ahead of the present tense, convinced God gave him nine lives and a coupon for ten more. Psychologists might slap diagnostic stickers across his file; Nico would peel them off to make confetti.

He’s chaos with loyalty, violence with a punch-line, a machete wrapped in gift paper. The Brotherhood keeps him around because victory tastes better dipped in wildfire—and because some monsters need to be out-crazy’d before they die.

WANTED CONNECTIONS

Second daughters are not supposed to matter. Not in a family like theirs. She was born small, quiet, and late—like she missed her cue. Jaya had already bloomed like a bruiseless apple: sharp, lovely, full of promise. Their mother barely glanced at her in the crib. Their father joked about saving her for a “profitable match,” and no one ever laughed.

Dubai is made of glass and secrets. She doesn’t remember Dhaka, only the way Jaya used to whisper about it when he thought no one was listening. He carried it with him like a pressed flower. She carried nothing. Just her name and the future someone else had written for her in ink she wasn’t allowed to touch.

She never set foot in their father’s workroom. Not once. The door stayed locked, and she stayed good. Good girls had no need to know how mandrake screamed, or what sound a selkie’s skin made when it was stripped and salted. She learned how to charm a room, not carve a rune.

Magic found her late. Too late for their mother’s liking. Her potions fizzled like wet matches for years, and every time her father sighed, she shrank a little smaller. But outside—out in the wild—things were different. Moss liked her. Vines curled toward her fingers. She met others there, where names were less important than scent and silence.

Her friends howled when she laughed and never asked what family she came from. She didn’t know they were wolves—not really. Not until Jaya said it, casually, like a joke. Like a knife slipped between ribs. She remembers the way her parents went still. Remembers the howling that never came again. She forgave him, of course. But she never really laughed after that.

There were rules now. She didn’t bring anyone home, not even classmates. Her mother started asking questions about full moons. Her father watched the shadows more closely. The house got quieter. Lonelier. Jaya disappeared into the greenhouse, into his books, into himself.

He looked pale. Tired. She saw it first, but no one ever listened to her. Not until she told them. She didn’t even say it cruelly. Just a sentence, dropped like a pebble into a well. “I think Jaya’s seeing someone... I think he’s a vampire.” She thought they’d lock the windows. Maybe force an arranged engagement with that awful girl from Cairo.

They didn't ground him. They buried the man. What was left of Jaya came home in a silence so sharp it left paper cuts on her skin. Her brother was gone.

They started dressing her in leadership. Telling her about alliances. About what kind of husband she might tolerate. About what sacrifices were necessary to protect their name. She nodded through it all. She packed that night.

She didn’t have a plan. She didn’t have magic worth envying. But she had shame. And she had a brother who needed to hear the words: I’m sorry. And this time, she would mean them enough to bleed if she had to.

Wanted Plots:

 I’m REALLY looking for her to get turned as a werewolf not too long after she arrives. We can work out if its willingly or not. 

Low key I kinda want a few people to just….ruin her life. Take advantage of how impulsive and naive she can be. Make her suffer.

sought/current connects;

The Host: ( @declanofruin ) Ironwood's elders had tried to scrub Briar from history, but mortal men will always crave power, and so some foolish soul sought to keep the witch's grimoire rather than keep it. Thus it tumbled through time, a well kept secret, but not too well kept. Before it landed in its final resting place, enough of it's incomplete verses had been poorly copied to cause problems in the far flung future. Declan McCormick finds himself host to something akin to the Deathroot, and it links he and Briar inexorably. The Link: (daniella domotor) Briar's grimoire eventually came to rest with a vampire who had found her way into the good graces of Ironwood. This was one of the first people sought out on her arrival, and the two enjoy a, er... fraught relationbship. The Old Blood: ( @sunshincwitch ) Briar left Ironwood long ago, but in he return to the world, she finds that not only has it survived the centuries, but that there is a new rift in the coven surrounding a young witch, Chamomile. Briar would use this young woman as an athame for her revenge, a keening blade with which to sunder Ironwood, root and all. The New Blood: ( @estrideats ) Falling in with The Phial Coven, Briar plays at the potionmaker, offering draught and drug to those in the know for any and all applications one might ply from magic. She keeps a garden in her humble apartment; and sells her makings impromptu and under the table. Most are mundane, banal drugs that help with ache or worry. Others are more murky in their purpose, or outright bloody in intent. Friends/Coworkers ( @lrivkin , @bloodshcd) Briar is an odd duck to most, and splits her life between her witchly pursuits and evenings at The Satin Cabaret where she dances and plies her body in exchange for money and, secretly, as fuel for the seedling in her soul, blood that feeds the Death Root and provides the font for her magical power.

bio;

( tw; Compulsory Childbirth, Compulsory Heterosexuality, Infanticide, Blood (blood magic), body horror )

PROLOGUE IS PAST Seventh daughter born to her mother, Drufilla was raised in an era where man commited some of his greatest sins in the name of rooting out the sins of others. Raised in Ironwood Coven, she became beholden to the prophecy that a Seventh Daughter born of a Seventh Daughter would yield unimaginable and unlimitless magical potency.

Drufila, however, had no designs on motherhood. No desire to sire anything, for her heart had been taken by another Ironwood Woman. The two of them desired little else than to live their time out together, but A Seventh Daughter is too precious of a thing, and Ironwood's jaws were as cold and hard as strong as their namesake. They didn't care who Drufila Loved, but they wanted their Seventh of Seventh.

What resulted was a bloody swathe of murder that resulted in near ruin. For Drufila herself, and for generations of the Coven's history.

Drufila and her lover were dragged back to Ironwood's clutches in those early days, and Drufila's attempt to salt the earth of her womb to render herself useless to Ironwood's plan was met with harsh retaliation; her lover's blood and life were used to draught a concoction that would leave her fallow once more. The loss of love and the injustice of the ritual drove Drufila mad, and so once more she escaped Ironwood and into the woods of the countryside surrounding the coven's patch, from where where visited her vengeance upon them. Ere long she found herself quickened with an unwanted first of seven, in her grief and agony and hatred she used that child's life as fuel for her revenge; a Hex that would destroy Ironwood.

Blood and dark magic and her own affinity for the roots and herbs and flowers that grow up out of the Earth resulted in the cultivation of a seedling; the Death Root, a plague of a magical plant; she swallowed this seed and let it take root in her very soul, and it sapped up all of the magic in her, offering it's own power in exchange for blood.

It started simply; crops would harrow and yield only morbid, bleeding, misshapen fruit, livestock would turn up dead, wasted into nothing, strange black briars erupting from their bellies and sprouting up as they screamed about the incessant wailing of phantom infants. Soon enough however it was children doing the same; and anybody who would so prick their finger on those strange black thorns and would soon find themselves rife with consumption, a new soil bed for that accursed plant. Drufilla, to Ironwood, became the Briar Witch, a title she wore proudly.

It wasn't long before the leaders of Ironwood realized what the source of this hex was, and they bound together to commit to the world a ritual that would rid them of it. By the end, Ironwood's number was decimated, but Drufila was spelled away, trapped in another world, doomed to live out the same cold, wintry day for the rest of eternity.

The sisters of Drufila Ironwood scrubbed the shame of her name from their record. Her grimoire, and thus the nature of Deathroot, was intended for destruction, but those who covet power instead hid it away, where it tumbled through time in secret, the only record of this bloody and sinful era of the coven's history. PAST IS PROLOGUE Drufila emerged from that world after reliving the same wintery day for centuries, maddened by the torturous cycle of repetition . Drawn out of that hexed prison in the space between one year and the next, on a night where the stars matched those of the night she'd vanished and the veil between worlds had weakened, she found herself completely adrift. The keystone that acted as the block-gate to her empty mirrorworld had come to rest in The Siltshore Mausoleum in Port Leiry, bloodied and resting in a corner of the grass after an Ironwood Witch had lost their life in a massacre while in the area searching for the wayward Chamomile Greensmith.

Briar finds now a world that is as alien to her as any fairy story of her childhood. Flameless lights. Carts without Horses. Magical mirrors that held all the world's knowledge in them.

(TW. Child Abuse, Kidnapping, Pirates, murder, blood, violence, war, guns)

001. Born in a small fishing village on the east coast of Korea during the Joseon dynasty. Growing up the sea was a close companion and salt water practically ran through her veins. She adored her parents and her sister and became known throughout the village for being quick to action.

002. She was still quite young when the raiders attacked, Wokou. She wasn’t quite fast enough then. She remembered taking the ear of the man who grabbed her between her teeth, the first drop in a long life of tasting blood.

003. By the time The Tortoise found her when she was older, she had been sold to a street fighting gang where her nightly but the man with eyes older than his neck knew what she did not. That the age of the Wokou was coming to an end. As the howls of dying men and the burning of a building scarred with the blood of her compatriots fell around her, the man watched as Ha-Jeong clawed her way back into the pit, taking one last victim. The head of the league, the one who she had imagined reaping every fight he had put her through. The Tortoise offered a hand to her in the aftermath, an offer, and he hand bruised and scarred with violence reached for it.

004. He took her under his wing, trained her in more practical ways of fighting. She adored life on the boat, fit in with his crew of misfits who had all clung to life and had decided to help the ancient entity who had taken them under his shell. The Tortoise also taught her to read. Knowledge laid bare before her. She found in her adventures that books and knives were her preferred form of payment, knowledge and defense. The balance suited her. Salt and blood and paper would be what she would build her life on.

005. She knew there had been risks when it came to this excursion. But she was bleeding out. This was the end. Until it wasn’t. “Do you want to live little crane?” She heard him whisper. And as the thrum of life in her ears slowed she found herself biting back, yes.

006. Death suited Ha-Jeong more than life ever had. The Tortoise instilled reverence and indulged her in her desire for knowledge. She wasn’t human, not anymore, but she found taking a step back from life had made the venture all the more fascinating. He left her with teachers and instructors throughout their journies and she attempted to absorb it all.

007. These weren’t the hunters she had seen in her travels. That she had both run from and trained with. These were other night walkers, other undead. The stake bit through the heart of the Tortoise. She knew he was gone before he hit the ground. She was over two centuries old, and death was an old friend in their line of work. They got away.

008. But Death followed, slowly and meticulously. “Only the weak bark,” he had told her. She didn’t bark, she barely breathed. And it was in between breathes she took her revenge. Earned her name.

009. Pirating from afar would not be her style. She would always return to the Sea but she was not a tortoise. She left the boat in the care of a girl that had come to them over the years. The faces changed but the intention was always the same, life had value. Ha-Jeong took off on her own. Revenge satisfied she intended to learn more of the changing world, observe humanity, aid it where she could, but she wasn’t not of it. She had lost that long ago.

010. She had held a gun before but none like the beauties they started making as the century, yet again turned. A far shot, the accuracy only to be improved. Just as deadly from above as she was below. Ha-Jeong thought being ‘sharp shooting’ was a fine art.

011. The world was opening, globalizing, for better or worse. She met another skilled fighter. Indulged her interest, learned his craft. He was a human that outaged herself, a rare thing. In this way he was more a part and seperate from the world than she was. An equal.

012. Decades passed and he started listening to whispers she knew better than to heed. ‘We are not like them, but that does not make us gods.” The Tortoise had said. She was confident she could outmaneuver almost anyone but the whispers of power that came from the legion that did not speak were nothing but trouble.

013. He stopped showing up one day, she didn’t know what had happened. Could only hope he had t fallen into the trap of power that had been laid but she had her own problems at hand. Her home country called to her.

014. The Japanese invasion sparked resistance. She joined the side of the Korean people. The horrors of the early 20th century were unparalleled. Still she always managed to evade capture. Always a breath away from death.

015. The Secound World War ended and she was tainted with the blood of good people, fellows who had deserved better. And yet it never got better. The Japanese had gone but unrest remained.

016. She watched tension and outside forces cannibalize her nation. Saw the worst of humanity. Saw human spirits breaking. She met another friend. Someone who had lungs like hers. They spoke of a clan, a place to belong. A place where causes and human spirits were foreign. It was almost piratry. She had known it once and after decades of trying to fight for a cause and loosing. Her conscious needed a break.

017. She was a form gun for higher. Hiding behind her crosshair. Humans and supernaturals mattered less through a crosshair. She still trained, kept her body agile, was ready for any sort of fight. But she preferred the impersonal.

018. Not them. She couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it. Some small nostalgic part of her. This person did not deserve to die. A Shot not Taken.

019. Reardon sent her to Port Leiry. A semi-retirement. She had handed the man at the dock a wad of cash and the sea was hers. She would take her shots for Reardon and return to the docks when she was done. Little did she know, Port Leiry was not the quiet town it had been made out to be.

Wanted Connections

A Pupil- a hunter Ha-Jeong trained, maybe they knew what she was, maybe they only found out later. Either way she was sought out to train this person in the way of killing and killing well. (0/1)

The Shot Not Taken- Recently in her career, for whatever reason, Jeong refused to take out a target and that is why she is now being sent to Port Leiry. (1/1) @killvrinstinct

The one who knew she was of the Sea: Someone from early in Ha-Jeong's immortal life. A human or a witch lover that made her feel more of the ocean than an immortal being. She thinks they died, and was the last mortal lover she seriously took, but maybe something happened. Maybe they still walk among us. (0/1)

Whispers of Reardon: The friend who told her in the aftermath of war to join a clan. Reardon, a clan of crime and purpose. Really open to explore whatever type of relationship that would’ve been to have Ha-Jeong commit to a cause. (0/1)

The Contracted- People she has worked with throughout her line of work. She’s been around since the 50s, you could have run into her anywhere. Even if she was just a breath in the shadow.

The Hunted- Has she taken a shot at you in the past, someone you liked. She’s impersonal but who knows who hired her.

They Who Hire- Need her to do a job. Do away with someone. She operates in coin and for the rare few will be tempted by the human cause.

Humanity Roots- There have been people who have come in and out of Jeong’s life over the years. Lovers, acquaintances, distractions. Some ways to indulge her deep seated humanity.

Sea wanderers- Boat Rental customers and Regulars.