BN Application

[legallydead]

1. Player Information
Name (or internet handle): Carly
Current characters in Bete Noire: Homura Akemi
Past characters in Bete Noire: None

2. Character Information
Name: Kaitlyn Marsh
Livejournal Username: legally_dead
Fandom: Vampire: the Masquerade (OC)
Image: pic here
Reserve: link

3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance: Kait looks like she might be in her late twenties or early thirties; despite being a vampire, she actually is—she has literally been a vampire for about a year, and will be turning twenty-nine soon.

She is a tallish lady, has shoulder-length dark hair and dresses in modern but plain styles. While she’ll arrive in Bete Noire looking a little rough and tumble, as she just survived the apocalypse, when given the opportunity to be choosier about her dress she gravitates toward business casual. She is really pretty boring in appearance, okay.
History:
Personality: What kind of person decides to go out at night, dress up, and fight crime? And why would an otherwise-sane woman with a career give up her life to do that?

Kait, a strongly compassionate individual, always hated to see people bullied and abused. It made her even angrier when she grew up and realized that not only did it still happen, but that it was inherent in the system. Kait, who was both opinionated and stubborn, couldn’t let something like that be. Not on her watch. She’s also an outgoing, dynamic individual, and wasn’t content to just make phone calls to representatives or donate money—she had to do something about it herself to feel right about things.

She’s very much an idealist and very firmly believes that a future of justice and peace can happen—people just have to be able to see that it’s possible. And it just needs a little bit of a push to get there from here! A push from her. She has… difficulty delegating responsibility. She is that control freak in your class who always wanted to write the responses herself and did all the work so she could make sure it was done right. Yeah, she was that kid.

She is, also, kind of a dreamer and likes to imagine things as heroic stories. She likes to think of herself as the hero! This is, from prior experience, not very accurate and she is getting to the point where she is more the hero of a George R.R. Martin-ish story. Ouch.

But she would like to be the hero and holds herself to that standard. She tries to do the right thing at all times, although sometimes it isn’t so clear what exactly the right thing is. Oftentimes she gets frustrated when things aren’t as clear-cut as she’d like them to be, but she counterbalances that part of her nature with her more thoughtful side. She is, after all, quite clever and a thinker; she knows that the uncomfortable questions are the important ones, even when they’re inconvenient. But she’s also willing to acknowledge that she doesn’t always know the answers.

Mostly. On alternating days, maybe. Well, not to antagonist-types, though, because she knows her TV Tropes well enough to spot a Hannibal Lecture a mile away.

On the whole she’s conflicted about being a vampire; once the shine wore off and her sire was dead, it was just outright confusing and added all sorts of complications she didn’t want, like this tendency to fly off the handle at a moment’s notice.

And really most of the vampires she’s met (with a handful of exceptions) have been total douchebags; she’s more inclined to think that that’s what becomes of most vampires eventually. You live so long and get so jaded and callous and so far from humanity that you really do turn into a monster. A lot of vampires treat people as things, and that’s precisely what she’s dedicated her life (and unlife) to fighting against. She’d prefer to off herself before it happens to her. And, you know, maybe take some other vampires with her, because as far as she’s concerned most of them are wastes of space.

As a result of this, she’s kind of self-conscious about her feeding habits; she feeds on animals when she needs to, and prefers to go after criminals or corporate assholes when she can. Especially if she knows they’re guilty. She doesn’t want to inflict herself on innocent people; she doesn’t feel that’s right.

Sexual Preferences/Orientation: Kait is straight, although she’s never had many relationships that lasted particularly long; her work has always come first and she throws herself into it with a vengeance. She had a few boyfriends in college, but none of them were really her type and they ended up going their separate ways. That, and Kait’s intensely political and opinionated, which tends to put people off. There is no such thing as “agree to disagree” in a relationship with Kait.

In general she is attracted to people for personality and other personal qualities and values rather than on appearance. She’d be really interested in someone who highly valued justice and idealism and wanted to change the world. Like her sire cough cough
Powers: Kait is exceptionally strong—she could, if she wanted, do things like lift cars and stuff—and fast in a way that is clearly supernatural. She can also charm and entrance people as well as intimidate them to the point where they are compelled to run away very, very fast.

As a vampire, if a mortal or another vampire drinks her blood, they become supernaturally fond of her and inclined to do what she says; she doesn’t really do this, though, since it creeps her out a little bit. She is perfectly happy to ignore supernatural shit in favor of punching things.
Reason for playing: Well, the original game I played her in, I was just getting a handle on her character right before the game ended, so it’d be neat to be able to play with her a bit more! She would also really love a place with actual superheroes that get taken seriously. And his is one of the few places she will ever have canon buddies, so.

Also, she is sort of slowly on a slide toward grimdark; she started out with idealistic reasons for doing what she did, but she is becoming increasingly disillusioned with her ability to really change things, whether in the system or outside of it, and I think it would be neat to see what would happen to her in a city like Bete Noire that is so corrupt and generally gross. And encourages her ragey tendencies, which she has in spades because it’s the curse of her particular type of vampire. She’s sort of at a point where she’s wavering between continuing Doing the Right Thing, no matter what it costs her, and just smashing fucking everything because she is so pissed off.

Also I feel like there’s a lot to get involved in—there’s a bunch of vampires for her to hate (or hang out with, in the case of Diana and friends), there’s the Uproar, which I’m like 99% sure she would be so very behind, there’s crime for her to fight. Wheeeee!

4. Original Character Supplement
World History: wiki
Character History: Kaitlyn Marsh grew up on comic books and adventure novels. She loved stories of heroism, of strong people fighting for the little guy. It was her calling. It spoke to her. She was always the sort of kid that stood up to bullies on the playground and was into fair play.

Of course, she didn’t have superpowers and “superhero” wasn’t something you went to college for, so she decided to become a lawyer, with the intent of being a public prosecutor. Closest thing, right? Only when she finally got there, she was quickly disillusioned; most of the people she was getting guilty verdicts on were the poor and downtrodden she wanted to help, driven to theft, prostitution and drugs out of desperation. Meanwhile, a few big corporate cases making big news country-wide had the defendants get off on house arrest and next to no loss of their livelihoods.

This pissed her off. It was wrong! It was unfair! It was stupid and even if it was how the law worked, maybe the law was wrong, because the law is supposed to work for the good of the people.

So when someone offered her epic ass-kicking powers, was she going to say no? Never.

Her sire, Alexander Pertellis, happened to be visiting San Francisco from Phoenix, AZ to see friends, and, when it was time for him to leave, asked Kait to come with him. She liked the idea, since she’d done her undergrad education in Phoenix at ASU West, and wanted a change of scenery. However, she needed a couple months to clear all of her obligations before she could move out and start over elsewhere, so he went ahead of her.

…Which actually ended up being her good luck, because in the span of those couple months, the whole of vampire society in Phoenix vanished into thin air.

Heading there to investigate, Kait found herself among a host of other vampires who’d been similarly interested in investigating for reasons of their own or just looking to get themselves some territory. At the same time, Kait was looking for a fresh start and a place where she could dip her toes into vigilantism.

It turned out among the other Kindred in the city there were some that had similar interests; Nathan Key and Findo Gask also had similar aspirations to superheroism. However, there was to be no happy ending, as Key and Gask were betrayed by someone they’d mistakenly trusted. Meanwhile, the state of the city was rapidly deteriorating from chaos brought by reckless vampires and the consequences of their actions. Oh, and then the Masquerade got broken pretty much forever on live television.

Long story short, one of the vampires ended up destroying all technology forever to become a godlike creature of destruction and a Camarilla hit squad sent to destroy the massive masquerade breach attempted to slaughter most of the city and in the chaos Kait never did manage to track down the douchebag who’d gotten her friends killed. All she could do was try and save as many people as she could. Superpowers or not, Kait wasn’t a very powerful vampire, and in the face of supernatural threats? Not a lot she could do.

And thus ended the world. Now she’s trying to figure out what comes next.

5. Samples
First-Person: d_m entry or:

[She doesn’t know where she is, but she’s in a city, an actual city, and her cell phone has suddenly come alive again and is getting signal. …hopefully this isn’t some hallucination or something. Still, though, it would be nice to know where she is, exactly, so she might as well ask on this craigslist-forum-type-thing they seem to have locally…]

Let me know if I’ve posted this question the wrong place, but could anyone get me a map of the surrounding area? All I’ve been able to find are maps of this city. Or if you could tell me where Bete Noire is in relation to some other landmarks. I’ve… gotten a bit… lost while traveling, and I need to get my bearings a little, it seems.

Third-Person:
She has, really, done all she can do in Phoenix. Or the world, maybe. The people at the university might survive; she’s done the best she can to organize things that they could. They’re smart.

What, though, do you do when you’ve got forever and the future is so uncertain?

So Kait gets a bedroll and starts walking. She travels and hunts animals by night and rolls herself up in the sleeping bag by day. She’s not sure where she’s going. Maybe it’s somewhere where she can make a new start; maybe it’s not so much a physical place and more of a sense of purpose. She keeps track of the days that pass in the little notebook she carries.

On the seventh day, she sees the glow of a city’s lights on the horizon. She’d thought technology had perished with the Weaver, but who cared? Maybe it was a sign. (Or, maybe it would be better if it wasn’t, considering her experiences with magicky mumbo-jumbo.)

She can’t really help it. For the first time in months, she feels that most precious of emotions: hope. She runs.

The city limits come up fast—she’s not burning blood, it’s too precious of a resource right now, but she’s always been a fast runner. And what she finds, as broken and gritty and grimy as it is—there’s light here, and people, and civilization. Something in the world still works.

And for her, it’s another chance.

Third-Person #2:
Her first kill and it wasn’t even intentional.

He’d just—well, it wasn’t like he was completely innocent! Him and his gang of looters had broken into the supplies and she’d just been so pissed that for fuck’s sake, people, can we not even figure out how to work together even in a crisis like this and, well, she’d had her sword in hand because what if those creepy Lasombra twins were still around, and—

—and yeah. He hadn’t even had time for fear or last words; Kait’s strong enough to be on even footing even with older, scarier vampires, but mortals don’t really stand a chance. So here’s this guy, sworded in half. Welp.

Nate would have found it deplorable. The Bloodied Mask would have said it was a job well done. But both of them are dead and Kait doesn’t really know how to feel.

After all, didn’t she take up this role to protect the little people? It was seeing too many people go to jail for years for petty theft out of desperation and minor drug use and too many rich men get off of embezzlement and abuse of power that drove her to this. But at the same time, if they’d taken enough of the stash of food and water, they could have gotten the rest of the survivors killed. And some people, regardless of standing, are still just bad, and—

Everything is just so fucking complicated. What would Batman do?

Well, angst, probably, and be a dick to Robin considering some of the recent plotlines. Maybe that’s not such a helpful question.

She just wanted to help people, to make the world a better and fairer place. How did it all go so batshit crazy off the rails?

Well, she could say that it’s all the fault of fucking vampires god damn it but that wouldn’t really be fair to people like Diana and Jhessail and Nate and Findo, and, really, when it comes down to it, her decisions are still her decisions alone. And fuck, she totally just killed a guy oh god.

And no one else is going to deal with that for her, so she’s going to have to.

She crouches down by the body. Studies the man’s face. Maybe he was normally an upstanding citizen driven to desperation by the giantdragonpocalypse. Maybe he was a total asshole who definitely deserved this. Maybe he wasn’t particularly good or particularly bad but in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And maybe what bothers her the most is that it feels less important to know whether it was right or wrong and more important that she’s not like all those asshole vampires who just murder people for kicks. Like, it would be great if someone would come and reassure her that she is not one of them, that she’s still a good person in spite of everything, that the fact that she’s asking these questions of herself means her heart’s still in the right place, at least, even if it doesn’t beat anymore.

Every day, it seems, the world gets more and more complicated and less and less easy to deal with. Legal or illegal was easy. Right and wrong? Less so.

And—oh, fuck it, it’s getting toward dawn, isn’t it. And out in the open next to dead bodies is not really the best place for existential navel-gazing, probably. Rome wasn’t built in a day and possibly figuring this out in a satisfactory way isn’t going to happen in the next hundred years.

So in the meantime dude’ll get a burial, and if he can be identified she’ll get his family some compensation. And she’ll… work on this.

She doesn’t feel a weight lifted off her conscience—if anything, it’s heavier than before—but she can bear it. Some things, it seems, don’t change between mortal and vampire. There will always be difficult questions, and Kait, vampire or mortal, will always be in search of the difficult answers.