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Player Info

Name: Wizera
Age: 29 Yes, I’m old
Contact: wizera
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Character Basics:

Character Name: Sam Moon (originally Samantha Halper)
Journal: thegreatexperiment
Age: Body frozen at 17, actual age 20
Universe: White Wolf’s World of Darkness (Vampire: The Requiem)
Canon Point: A few hours after learning of Lady Grey’s death (April 2014)
Debt:

Class A: 3 years
Class B: Total of Class 9 years, 6 months
Class C: Total of Class 35 years, 10 months

Willingly becoming an immortal creature rather than dying.

Failure to fast on Yom Kippur (3 counts).

Causing supernatural and unwanted orgasm (let's say roughly 360 counts).

GRAND TOTAL: 48 years, 4 months

Original Character Section:

Setting:

Samantha Moon comes from White Wolf Publishing’s new World of Darkness. This is a series of interconnected role playing games (tabletop or LARP) that take place in a modern world, similar to the one we inhabit, with the added bonus of supernatural creatures and influence. Samantha’s specific game is Vampire: The Requiem, which centers largely around the machinations of vampires—sometimes called Kindred—in the World of Darkness. There are similar games detailing the rules for werewolves, mages, changelings, and other creatures. White Wolf maintains an active wiki, housing all of the canon information about the World of Darkness.

Because of the sheer volume of information available on the wiki, and because Samantha’s particular backstory is set in an independent LARP setting, I will distill the basic information about the history of vampires here. Please feel free to contact me for additional information.

The origins of the Kindred species are, largely, unknown in the World of Darkness. Although some vampiric scholars hold that Longinus was the first vampire, marked by the hand of God for his crimes at the crucifixion, there is no definitive proof. Other theories exist and there are vampires who claim to predate Lazarus by hundreds of years. The Longinus story, however, is the predominant one.

What Kindred are are essentially animated corpses. To become a vampire, a human being is killed and fed a drop or two of a vampire's blood, right before the last spark of life goes out of them. In a span of time ranging from a few minutes to a few hours at most, the newborn vampire, called a "childe" will reawaken as a vampire. What gives Kindred their power is a force known as "the Beast" that exists in each and every one of them. It is a being of pure instinct to survive and when a vampire is overwhelmed by fear or anger, the Beast can take control. The life of a Kindred is a constant struggle to keep the Beast in line.

Kindred exist as five distinct clans. These clans are bloodlines, passed on from sire to childe, that define what a vampire’s natural supernatural talents are. Samantha’s clan is known as the “Ventrue.” Often seen as the blue-bloods of the vampire world, the Ventrue are noted for being resilient, good with animals, and extremely gifted at mind control. The clan as a whole, however, is noted for some mental instability. Derangement more easily touches the soul of a Ventrue who witnesses something that defies his or her personal code of morality. The Gangrel, like the Ventrue, are good with animals and resilient, but they are much more in touch with their inner beasts than other vampires. It is among the Gangrel that legends of vampires turning into bats can be found. Many vampiric scholars hold that Vlad Dracul was a Gangrel. If he existed at all. A small minority sometimes argue that he was a Mekhet. Shrouded in secrecy, the Mekhet are incredibly quick, gifted in observation, and capable of turning invisible. Nosferatu, like the Mekhet, can also turn invisible. The clan, as a whole, possess an unsettling quality that make them difficult to interact with. By contrast, the fifth and final clan, the Daeva, are known as the social butterflies of the Kindred world. These are the vampires who traverse high society, charming and scheming their way through unlife.

While the clans are natural bloodlines, in which vampires hare very little say, there also exist five political factions, further dividing the Kindred world. Each faction arose organically, out of the natural social evolution of unlife. Each also comes with its own secrets. Although a vampire does not strictly have to choose a side, unaligned vampires are left without political protection in an often tumultuous world. Briefly, the five factions—called covenants—are as follows: The Lancae Sanctum is a covenant of Catholic vampires who believe they exist solely to remind people that monsters are real and they must put their faith in God; the Circle of the Crone is a heavily Wiccan covenant that seeks to create, cultivate, and sustain life through mysterious blood magic; the Invictus is a feudal covenant that tries to hold vampiric society to a rigid hierarchy for mutual protection; the Carthian Movement is a progressive covenant that seeks to modernize Kindred politics; the Ordo Dracul is a covenant of scientists, reportedly first formed by Dracula, that seeks to transcend the vampiric condition.

The covenants are not monoliths. Within each are members who span the entire continuum of human morality and conscience. Nor are the clans constantly warring with one another. In any given city, the relationships between covenants can vary considerably. Where in some towns, the Circle of the Crone and the Lancae Sanctum are openly at war with one another, in others, they view their roles as complimentary and get along quite well. While the laws which govern Kindred society were dreamed up first by the Invictus, all covenants usually agree to live by them, in one fashion or another.

Among the laws which define Kindred life are rules set in place to protect “the Masquerade.” This is a mutual understanding that the first priority for all vampires is to ensure that human beings do not find out that vampires exist. Vampires are expected not to engage in wanton destruction and murder. They must seek permission to sire new vampires and are held responsible for their progeny. They are expected to receive the blessings of their elders before feeding in their territory. Of course, “elders” can mean any number of things, depending on context.

Most Kindred cities, in the World of Darkness, contain a political structure advocated by the Invictus. The city is ruled by a Prince (the title is gender neutral) who governs Kindred affairs with the aid of a Seneschal, Sheriff, and council of vampire senators known as “primogen.” How a Prince comes to power varies from place to place, but generally speaking, a Prince is an elder, one who has been in the city for a very long time and who has gained a measure of status for service to the city’s well-being. Princes must walk a fine line. Too weak-willed and they can become puppets of the primogen council. Too tyrannical and they face overthrow from an unhappy body of citizens.

Not all vampires are constantly embroiled in politics, of course. The interests of Kindred are as complex and varied as human beings. But politics are a fact of life, even for the most apathetic of citizens. Knowing the laws is the difference between living in peace and being hunted down by the Sheriff. Most vampires toe the line and get by, living their nightly lives without much contact with the city government, attending court only when necessary. It’s also uncommon for vampires to interact with werewolves, mages, changelings, or any other super natural creature. They do interact with humans quite extensively however. Sometimes referred to as “kine” by older vampires, human beings, or more specifically, human blood, is the only food source available to most vampires. While some younger, less potent vampires can survive off of animal blood, it’s never as nourishing or satisfying.

Blood potency is a natural pecking order among Kindred. With some supernatural exceptions, all vampires exude a predator’s taint that can be picked up by other vampires. In addition to telegraphing a vampire’s vampiric nature, it also telegraphs how potent the vampire’s blood is. A vampire with a blood potency of one or two is considered fairly weak. These are the vampires who can survive on animal blood. They tend to be very young, although this is not always the case. As blood potency increases, vampires rely more on human blood. And at higher and higher levels, vampires will find that they can subsist only on vampire blood. While this makes them powerful, this also makes them dangerous. Most vampires who reach this level of potency will voluntarily enter a state of torpor to water down their potency, back to functional levels. Torpor can last anywhere from a week to a century. For supernatural reasons that defy Kindred understanding, the length of a torpor depends on how close a vampire is to their own humanity. The more a vampire adheres to a human code of morality—whatever it might be—the shorter torpor will be.

This is important because not all torpors are voluntary. A vampire can effectively be beaten into a torpor. If they’re not killed outright by the sun or enemies as they slumber, they can wake up to a world that they do not even recognize. Adjustment, while not impossible, is a lengthy and unsettling process to undergo. It should also be noted that a vampire’s body is, generally, frozen in time from the moment of death. If a vampire cuts off a ponytail, it will grow back the following night. Similar changes, such as tattoos, dye jobs, or cosmetic surgery will also revert. Change is not utterly impossible, but difficult, to say the least. Some argue that the same is true of a vampire’s emotional intelligence, but that is the subject of great debate.

As addressed in the backstory section of this app, the world of Samantha’s specific LARP was embroiled in several tumultuous events. The Kindred of the game were on the brink of dropping the Masquerade, worldwide. Their plan was stifled by the superior race of undead, known as Predators (created specifically for the LARP), who put a stop to this nonsense by causing all of the electronics orbiting the earth to crash down, causing destruction and effectively ending the world was everyone knew it. As the story progressed, the vampires gradually learned more about Predator involvement in history. They were responsible for the destruction of Pompeii, the Spanish influenza, and several other world events, meant to quell the ambitions of the Kindred and remind them of their place. The Kindred of Los Angeles became unique in that they were some of the first to openly learn of the existence of Predators.

Predators were once Kindred. Like all other vampires, they were human, they were Embraced, and they became undead. They simply underwent a further transformation, referred to as “Uplifting,” becoming Predators. As such, they developed higher levels of their own vampiric disciplines, working on both humans and vampires alike. As far as anyone knows, they are at the top of the food chain in the World of Darkness.

History:

Sam heard many different versions of the story of her conception and birth, over the years. What they all agreed on was that her father’s name was Stephen Zachar and that he was a high-ranking member of the Ordo Dracul, a secretive order of vampire scientists, obsessed with finding ways to overcome the vampire condition. The stories further agreed that he was a Daeva, a clan of vampires known for being strong, charming, and quick. Finally, in every version of the story, she was born on the eighth of January, 1994.

The similarities end there. In some versions of the story, Stephen wished to punish a disobedient servant, and so, implanted her with his seed just to see what would happen. In other versions of the story, he fell in love with a mortal woman named Christina Delgadi and simply yearned to have a home and family with her. Some versions even claim that Sam was immaculately conceived by Stephen himself. She really never believed those versions. But regardless of the actual circumstances of her nativity, what Sam first learned was that sometime after she was born, that one of Zachar’s rivals in the Ordo, Karen Kostow, kidnapped her one night, secreting her away from her home in Lincoln, Nebraska, to put her into the foster system of Chicago, Illinois.

She didn’t learn this for many years, though.

From the time of her kidnapping, in 1994, until her Embrace seventeen years later, Sam lived a troubled, utterly mortal life. For some reason, no one seemed eager to adopt the screaming infant. She suffered from nightmares, even from an early age. Bounced around from home to home, her closest friends were fictional characters, from science fiction and fantasy, from books and comics. She became especially enamored with a popular movie franchise called Star Wars Space Wars. It wasn’t until she was nine years old that she was finally placed in her “forever home” with a well-off couple—Robert Halper and Anne Lyons—living in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Samantha was smart. Painfully so. And the suburban schools and lifestyle allowed her intelligence to blossom. Sam’s adoptive parents were good people, but even at her young age, she felt like a stranger in their house. The relationships were always cordial and warm, but never deep or intimate. At least, that’s the way that Sam felt. She could never quite trust them enough to use the word “love,” trust them enough to believe that they wouldn’t one day send her back.

That said, she did become surprisingly close to her adoptive mother’s younger brother, Tom Lyons. Uncle Tom was fun and exciting and he brought an air of energy and life into the household. Young Samantha was equally fond of Tom’s long-term girlfriend, Tina Presten. As Sam grew, she found herself spending more time with Tom and Tina than with her parents. They were wild and artistic and worldly and Samantha wanted to soak that up. It was a foregone conclusion that any time they invited her on an outing, she was eager to join them. They went to art openings and concerts and street festivals. Anything, as long as it was creative. In retrospect, though, Sam would always regret agreeing to join them at that rock opera for her sixteenth birthday.

As they walked from the theatre, discussing how very Avant-garde the music seemed, a man from the crowd was overly drawn to Sam. His attentions were decidedly unwanted and after several polite attempts to get rid of him, Tom decided to play the hero. He stood up to the stranger, forcefully asking him to leave the uninterested and underaged girl alone. Words turned into shoves and shoves quickly turned into blows. And as the terrified Tina and Samantha watched, Tom was thrown against a dumpster. His head cracked on a corner and he was dead before he hit the ground, blood going everywhere. His attacker fled, but as he left, Samantha was sure, beyond any doubt, that she saw the man’s face…change.

The tragedy rocked the family to its foundation. Life had always been so completely safe. Needless to say, Samantha’s insistence that the attacker had been something other than human was largely dismissed, chalked up to the shock. Sam, however, could not unsee what she saw that night. And only Tina seemed willing to listen. But what was there to say? Samantha, the star student, already graduating early and bound for college, couldn’t find the right books to consult, to explain what she’d seen. It was only a late bout of teenage rebellion that told her anything. Sneaking out of the house, going to Goth clubs and punk bars, she began to hear whispers about a world of darkness. But they were little more than unsubstantiated rumors, half science fiction and half superstition.

At the age of seventeen, Samantha was shipped off to the Arizona State University, enrolled as a biology and art history double major, with an art minor. Although she’d been accepted to both Harvard and Stanford, she stubbornly insisted on a party school, where she felt she would have the opportunity to escape and learn more about this supposed world of darkness. And, free of adult supervision, her teenage rebellion did briefly turned into a way of life. She spent large chunks of her time in the seediest places she could find, mostly around Phoenix, seeking out the hidden vampire world. But after months of trying, she found nothing. And so, Samantha settled back into her old habits, studying and going to artistic events. She found that a lot of regulars of the Phoenix art scene seemed drawn to her for no apparent reason, like the stranger who killed Tom. Two particularly ardent suitors, Larry Hiler and Richard Frye, became a little too familiar for her comfort. She couldn’t really figure out a way to get away from them and the steady streams of gifts they sent her. It didn’t matter in the end. The die was cast.

Both men were Daeva, vampires over a hundred years old. It seemed that the two of them had been in arbitration with the vampire prince of Phoenix, Cynthia Kane, for some time, over the right to turn Sam into a vampire. Their strange obsession with a seemingly unimpressive girl was annoying Prince Kane. She finally ordered Larry and Richard to bring Samantha before her, so that she could find out just what was so special about her. Outside of an art opening in the city, Samantha felt a chloroformed cloth over her mouth and nose and was out before she could scream. She came to in the middle of what seemed like a medieval court, hearing Larry and Richard argue before the Prince over who had the proper claim to her. The whole thing seemed utterly absurd to her. The Prince agreed. Finally irritated with the whole thing, the Prince decided to just flip a coin. Larry won (it was tails) and Richard went into frenzy of anger.

Richard started tearing apart the court. Many of the vampires there saw this as an excuse to air all kinds of grudges. The fight turned into complete pandemonium and Sam, the token mortal in the room, was gravely injured. Bleeding out and wounded, Sam was pulled out of harm’s way by a vampire named Karen Kostow. Karen only saw one way that Sam could get out of the situation alive, and that was to be Embraced. She asked Sam if that was what she wanted and Samantha immediately said yes. After that, she lost consciousness.

When Samantha woke again, she was exceedingly disoriented. Karen began to educate her. They were both vampires, she explained: a clan known as the “Ventrue.” They were marked for their mental abilities as well as a certain measure of instability. Once Sam was able to wrap her mind around that much, Karen continued to explain that vampires had been in existence since at least the year 33 C.E. and that there were five clans—or families—and five political covenants. Like in the stories of old, they needed to drink blood to survive. Sunlight burned them. Fire wounded them grievously. Stakes would send them into a coma. Holy water would simply get them wet, unless wielded by someone with True Faith. For someone so young, Sam handled the transition with remarkable grace.

It wasn’t long until Karen realized, however, that Sam was the baby she’d kidnapped many years ago. She was reticent about the subject for a year, focusing on teaching Sam how to survive in her new life. But Samantha, who was still obsessed with what happened to her Uncle Tom, eventually managed to draw some of the truth out of Karen. Karen reluctantly told her that she’d been born a dhampir (half vampire), of Daeva parentage, which was why the Daeva had always been drawn to her as a mortal. Dhampir were incredibly rare. Most vampires thought they were only the stuff of myth and legend. She further explained who Sam’s father was, relating the dozens of different stories about how and why Sam was born. No matter how much Sam pleaded and begged, Karen wouldn’t share what motivated her to kidnap a baby in the first place. She continually insisted that she’d done “the right thing.” But Sam wanted to understand what that was.

This eventually became a huge sticking point between them, frustrating Sam enough to ask to be emancipated only a year after her Embrace. She was very surprised when Karen agreed to let her go. When she asked why, Karen explained that she’d long ago left the Ordo because she no longer desired to be a part of their “evil” politics. And Sam, for better or for worse, was a part of their politics. Stephen Zachar had five children. They were his biological children from his mortal life who had all been Embraced. They were rallying for a position within the Ordo and it had been declared that whichever one of them managed to locate the long-lost Sam would earn the title. Sam was shocked and appalled, both by what Karen refused to tell her and by what Karen had neglected to tell her. They parted on tense terms, although they agreed to keep in touch with one another. As a parting gift, Karen took Sam to Illinois and, before her eyes, convinced Robert and Anne that she had gone backpacking in Europe and that they didn’t need to worry about her.

Against her better judgment, Samantha got in touch with Tina, who had moved out to LA, where she was working as a costume designer for low-budget, independent movies. Sam lied to her old friend, claiming that she was transferring to USC. Tina was only too happy to give her a place to crash. Sam moved into the basement apartment with Tina, adopting the persona of the lazy college student, taking classes at night and sleeping all day. The arrangement seemed to work.

Meanwhile, Sam decided that she needed to learn the truth about her origins and her family. This meant getting involved with the vampire society in LA. Unlike Phoenix, which was set up as a simple monarchy, the vampire society of Los Angeles was sprawling and bureaucratic. The Prince—one Elizabeth Englehart—had dozens of ministries and counsels and representatives. There were hundreds of vampires in the area. One of the first people she met there was Avery Anderson, a member of the Ordo Dracul. As it turned out, Avery was also Karen’s childe, Embraced in the late 1950s. Avery was a former FBI agent and a complete conspiracy theorist. To most people, his insane ideas and thorough files on everything from the moon landing to Celtic demons were eccentric and laughable. Sam, however, found that she liked Avery a lot. He wasn’t at all what she expected from a member of the Ordo Dracul, based on Karen’s descriptions. While Sam was reluctant to tell him the truth about her dhampir origins, she still found herself growing closer and fonder to Avery.

She joined the Carthian Movement, a progressive political party with a focus on reforming the feudal order of vampire life from days gone by. She made sure to be on friendly terms with every covenant, however. Having been Embraced during her punk stage of rebellion, she tried to make herself most at home in seedy, underground environments, for purposes of appearance. That, combined with her burgeoning love of graffiti as an art form, led her to befriend young gang members, close to her age. From them, she learned how to shoot a gun. Very, very well. She also began, in her quiet way, to start spreading little rumors here and there that she knew the location of Stephen Zachar’s “great experiment.” She used her contacts on the streets and she also used her art, painting messages in the graffiti.

Sam got a nibble on the bait almost immediately. A kindly man in the Ordo Dracul, going by the name of Frederick Michelson, arrived in town. Sam easily realized that he was Stephen’s son, and therefore, her half-brother. She resolved to play the situation coyly, observing Frederick from afar, often using her contacts in order to get a handle on what kind of person he was. She was very surprised to realize that he was actually quite decent. He was a doctor who, she learned, had developed several incredibly important vaccines and treatments over the years. The more she learned about him, the more she liked him. Eventually, she met with him in private, revealing that she was the “great experiment.” Frederick openly admitted that he’d come looking for her. In the position he wished to attain, he hoped to purge some of the less admirable traits from the Ordo Dracul. In his view, they were obligated to use their eternal life and wisdom to help all living creatures, including humans. This, once again, defied her expectations of the Ordo.

After taking a few days to think it over, she decided that she was willing to go with him, back to the Ordo headquarters in Nebraska, to allow him to be declared the victor in the contest. This would afford her the opportunity to finally meet her estranged father and, she hoped, lead to reform in the Ordo. It was her highest hope that no other child would have to grow up the way she had. The night she made her decision, however, she learned that Frederick had been brutally murdered. No one seemed to know what had happened, but the Ordo was frenzied over it.

A matter of days later, a vampire calling himself Ted arrived. Sam quickly learned that he, too, was one of Zachar’s children and her half-brother. Rumors immediately began to fly that Ted had taken up a secret haven in the city and was working on some project that he wouldn’t tell anyone about. There wasn’t any evidence about what it was, but it made Sam very, very nervous. A little time passed and nothing really spectacular happened. As with Frederick, Sam began to ask around about Ted, everyone just said that he was holed up in that secret haven. The speculation turned to whispers of curiosity and excitement; everyone convinced that this was the verge of a big breakthrough.

A short while later, Samantha heard that Ted was also found dead. Apparently, Ted’s apprentice came back with the news that Ted wanted to speak to a group of some other members of the Ordo Dracul. The group went along, but upon entering Ted’s hideout, they found nothing but a pile of ash. No one, not even the apprentice, knew what went wrong or what killed Ted. Samantha, however, began to see conspiracies everywhere. She started to feel a little bit adrift. Humbled by the deaths of Frederick and Ted and somewhat terrified, Samantha stopped her rumor mills. She slipped back into her quiet existence, unclear on what would be her next move. And more and more, she found herself gravitating to Avery.

A local and outspoken Carthian leader in the area—calling himself Tommy Sunshine—began to show an interest in Sam. He asked her out one night and during their evening, informed her that he was her half-brother. He’d left the Ordo behind for personal reasons; namely, he didn’t much care for Zachar’s wife, his stepmother Claudette. Sam asked Tommy a lot of questions about the mysterious Claudette, but it turned out that Tommy didn’t know much. He also wouldn’t tell Sam anything about her own mother or the purpose of her existence. Sam persisted, asking again and again. Tommy always side-stepped the issue.

About a year after settling in Los Angeles, it became known that the vampire population of the world was ready to drop the Masquerade that kept their existence secret from the human population. In the months leading up to the big drop, their society was filled with turmoil. Daniel Jericho, the leader of the Carthian Movement in Los Angeles, tried to recruit Samantha to aide him in his efforts to halt the drop. Jericho’s cold and brutal personality, however, isolated her from the rest of the Carthian Movement.

More mysterious deaths began to pop up and Sam would often look into them with Avery. They found video footage that was completely blurred out. They used spells to discover that the dead were simply drained of their will to live. They couldn’t quite piece all of it together, but Avery’s conspiracy theories began to get more and more elaborate, right up to the night the Masquerade was due to drop. At the appointed time, a communications blackout seized the world. Pieces of satellite and space station began to fall from the sky, raining fire and death and destruction. Most of the vampires of Los Angeles, including Tommy Sunshine, were killed and the city itself became isolated from the rest of the world.

The surviving vampires came together to try to make order out of chaos, which was difficult because of conflicting political agendas and personalities. Daniel Jericho and Grace Yi, leader of the Ordo Dracul, came head to head. Somehow, through all the fuss, Avery was named the new Sheriff and put in charge of investigating the cause of the rain of fire. Sam stayed by his side, while trying her best to contact Karen through graffiti. Meanwhile, the siblings dealt with panicked mortals, vampire hunters, crazed militias, and assorted other terrors that came with the end of the world. Through it all, Avery maintained a continued interest in the unexplained deaths of Frederick and Ted. Like a true conspiracy theorist, he was sure that there was a link between what happened to them and what happened to the world.

A month into the aftermath, Sam ran into a local woman who called herself Lady Grey. The encounter was unexpected, since Lady Grey largely went about her business under an invisibility spell. The fact that Sam was able to see through the spell was perplexing to both of them. Lady Grey quickly identified Sam as Tommy’s sister, which frightened her since they’d been keeping that a secret. She warned Sam that there were all kinds of files about her in Tommy’s abandoned haven and gave Sam the address and a key. Sam knew better than to simply accept vampires bearing gifts, so she told Avery about the encounter and the two of them agreed to visit Tommy’s haven together.

As it turned out, there were indeed files about Sam’s existence in the abandoned nest. The truth came out that she was the great experiment, but Avery was sympathetic and agreed to keep her secret. They gathered all of the information and prepared to leave, but in the process, they accidentally sprung a magical trap that Lady Grey left behind. Avery started to feel himself drain of the will to live. He slowly began to turn to ash from the inside out. Panicked, Samantha grabbed his arm. The pain immediately vanished. Neither of them were clear on what happened, but they left quickly, returning to the Ordo Dracul library to look through the files. There, Sam learned that she was the 88th in a long line of experiments that involved the murder of dozens of women whose wombs were ripped out and used to incubate hybrid children. Horrified as Sam was, Avery and the other members of the Ordo Dracul, including Grace Yi, were even more appalled. Satisfied that they were not the monsters Karen made them out to be, Sam decided to join the Ordo Dracul. They proved to be the most humane organization left in the city.

Sam’s decision did not win her a lot of friends in the new vampire government, which was predominantly controlled by members of the Carthian Movement, including Jericho. The members of the Ordo Dracul, however, were incredibly welcoming and friendly. They helped her start to sort through the documents, which described her entire infancy and referenced both her and a “control subject.” Clarification came when Karen made her way to Los Angeles. She explained that she’d been a part of the experiment, that Stephen Zachar and Claudette had somehow caused her to conceive and give birth to a child as well. This child, a girl, was the control subject. It was never Sam that Karen wanted to kidnap. Karen had been after her own daughter and taken Sam by mistake. And she’d been on the run from Claudette ever since.

It soon became clear that Claudette was not a vampire. Other members of the city were investigating a race known as “Predators.” According to their investigations, Predators controlled vampires the way that the vampires controlled humans. They also fed off of vampires, or, more specifically, the emotions of vampires. They were responsible for the rain of fire, in an attempt to keep vampires from revealing their existence to the mortal population. Claudette was assumed to be one of these Predators and, eventually, Avery and Sam realized that Lady Grey was one as well. They visited Lady Grey’s haven, to try to gather additional information. Lady Grey greeted them, revealing that she was also Zachar’s daughter and Sam’s half-sister. She started to feed on Avery. Sam put a stop to it, compelling her to fall asleep. The other members of the party then staked her, pinning her to the floor so that they could question her.

Over the course of the next several hours, Sam and Avery gleaned as much information as they could about Predators. Lady Grey was manipulative and cruel to them at first, using her powers against Avery (since she quickly discovered they didn’t work on Sam), but eventually, she proved willing to work with them, once they revealed that they had every intention of stopping Claudette. They released her, promising to keep her in the loop about what they accomplished. And it didn’t take them long.

A month or so later, as Avery was directing a meeting in the Ordo Dracul library, Stephen Zachar and Claudette showed up. They pretended to be travelers, but Avery called their bluff and a fight broke out. Claudette used her powers (which worked on everyone but Sam) to escape, but Zachar was left behind. The members of the Ordo Dracul questioned him, at length, about Predators and their nature. Sam kept to herself, watching the proceedings. Once the other vampires had decided they’d gotten everything they could and were prepared to release Zachar, Sam swooped in. She demanded that Zachar answer a question for her: Why? Why had he dedicated his life to creating dhampir children? Zachar coldly told her that he did it for the sake of science and to earn power and prestige among the Ordo. Sam realized, in that instant, that she had a creator, but she did not have a father.

Claudette, angry at her treatment, decided to punish Avery and the rest of the Ordo by paralyzing four mortals working in the library. The members of the Ordo Dracul released Zachar, who was puzzled by Sam’s outburst and couldn’t help but wonder if they’d met before. Feeling directionless, Sam and a few of her friends returned to Lady Grey, to report on what had happened. Lady Grey suggested that if Zachar and Claudette were in town, their “control subject,” Karen’s daughter, would also be. She further assumed that if Zachar and Claudette realized who Sam was and that she was now a vampire, they would probably Embrace the control subject (nicknamed “Addie” by Tommy Sunshine, for Experiment 88) so that she could continue to serve her purpose. Determined not to let anything awful happen to this innocent girl, Sam and her friends decided to rescue her.

Thanks to a map picked from Claudette’s pocket during the fight, they were able to locate the haven where Claudette and Zachar were staying. The doors were booby-trapped, Predator magic causing the front door to be imbued with the power of fear, the back door with anger. Since she seemed to be immune to Predator abilities, Sam touched the front door. She didn’t feel fear. She felt powered up, like she hadn’t felt before. The group charged in and rescued Addie, who, as it turned out had a hopeless case of Stockholm syndrome. Samantha struggled with her decision. On the one hand, she felt that no one ought to be Embraced in the name of science and without their consent, which she was sure was destined to happen. On the other hand, they’d taken Addie away from the only family she’d ever known.

As Sam continued to wrestle with her feelings, the situation in the city continued to deteriorate. Not only were hunters destroying everything, but Predators began to worm their way into Kindred politics. Among other things, one of them insisted that all of the members of the city government—including Avery—bind themselves to him. Although Avery and many members of the council were against this, Samantha worried for her brother’s safety. Realizing that she was somehow immune to Predator abilities, she proposed that the Ordo Dracoul analyze her blood, to see if there was something that that could explain her immunity and be replicated. Indeed, there were many artificial compounds in her blood, but they would take weeks to analyze. In the meanwhile, Samantha and Avery decided to attempt a little experiment. Avery drank a pint of her blood—thus binding himself to her—and asked Lady Grey to feed on him. While she was still able to do so, it took her a significant amount of effort. Some of her abilities also seemed to stop working on Avery, just as they did on Sam. Avery and Sam, armed with this new information, joined with a few other members of the Ordo Dracul to begin developing a new vampiric discipline, which they called the Coil of Rhea.

The new Coil needed testing and Avery’s paralyzed staffers needed to be saved. Sam, Avery, and some of their friends sought out a Predator for both needs. For better or for worse, however, the other vampires in town discovered that the key to killing the Predators lay in electricity. Within a matter of hours after this discovery, three Predators, including Lady Grey, were killed by boot squads marching through the city. Sam and Avery had the misfortune of witnessing one such murder. Sam was left haunted by the image of a Predator—with the body of a nine-year-old girl—being liquefied. The sight, along with her growing frustration, led her to call Claudette out on an open radio channel. Claudette arrived at the library, with Zachar in tow. Sam and Avery begged them to save his staff members, even offering them Addie’s safe return. Claudette and Zachar showed no interest in Addie, although they agreed to spare the mortals, in exchange for Avery “knowing his place.”

Personality:

I want to know where I belong,
Want to know where I came from
Want to know the reason why I’m here
The way I am
Feeling the things I feel…

It would be easy to dismiss Samantha as “nothing serious.” She’s mouthy, brash, and never does things halfway. Her hair is blue. She paints graffiti. Pop culture and profanity pepper her speech. Her youth is one of her most noticeable features and, because of it, she’s often disregarded by Kindred. At the same time, enormous bits and pieces of her personality can be explained, in part, because of her youth.

Although she’s a vampire, she’s still well within the span of her mortal life. Therefore, much of who she was before the Embrace is still there, untouched by the ravages of time. For starters, growing up in an affluent suburb of Chicago, raised by successful and career-minded parents, Samantha was brought up with the understanding that she could be anything she wanted to be, a mindset that hasn’t gone away yet. This has had both positive and negative consequences for her.

On the one hand, it has given her a strong sense of entitlement. Since money was never an issue, there was no real cost to her quest to discover who she was. Samantha was able to drift between social circles (gifted student, Goth chick, quirky artist) with little more than a change of costume. She could afford it. This sense of entitlement, too, transferred over into her Kindred life. She joined the Carthian Movement by default. That’s what Karen was. But the second that she decided it wasn’t working out for her, she switched to the Ordo Dracul. While changing covenants is certainly not unheard of in the Kindred world, to do so at such a young age was outrageous. But Samantha didn’t see it that way. She knew some parties would be upset, yes. She didn’t realize anyone would be scandalized. To her, one thing hadn’t worked, so she was just trying something new.

On the other hand, Samantha’s mindset of exploration and self-discovery has had some positive consequences on her personality. She is open-minded and eager to experience new things. Only at the beginning of her immortal life, Samantha knows that there are things in the world that are beyond her wildest imagination. She’s open to new possibilities and optimistic that they’re not all terrible things. Her open-mindedness also means she can see past some of the dogma of her elders. The fact of the matter is, where Kindred political factions are concerned, Samantha is incredibly informal and casual. Whereas some vampires will pick and choose their friends based entirely on their alignment, Samantha doesn’t care. Her philosophy is to look at the individual, rather than their covenant. If she likes you, she likes you. If you’re an ass to her, she’s not going to fawn and curtsy and play nice. She’ll be really frank about the fact that you’ve offended her.

Although she’s drifted between different mortal social circles, and has chosen to manifest herself as a bit of a punk, the truth of the matter is that Samantha is really still just a gifted student at heart. In the battle between social, physical, and mental attributes, her mental ones always rise to the top. She’s wickedly smart, creative, witty, and observant. She’s good at picking up patterns out of chaos and has a sharp memory (she can tell you even the most minute of details about the Star Wars Space Wars canon from memory). She's excellent in math. When she tries to be, she can even come off as eloquent.

Of course, this cleverness, too, is a double-edged sword. After a lifetime of being told that she’s clever, Samantha sometimes overestimates her own mind. Or rather, underestimates the abilities of others. When she comes up with a plan that she deems brilliant, it’s hard to get her to change her mind. She will stubbornly insist that her idea is the right idea and anyone who argues is just being difficult. And she decidedly holds a grudge against those she perceives as “questioning” her intelligence.

Cleverness doesn’t make for a mastermind, but Sam does scheme a bit. As a Ventrue, Samantha is particularly prone to suspicion. It doesn’t help that she’s begun to realize that her entire life has been a series of lies. Most of her schemes, however, are constructed with the purpose of protecting both herself and her loved ones. For example, she changed her name from Samantha Halper to Samantha Moon (self-aware enough to realize that she could never believably answer to a name other than “Samantha”) and she wears her blue wig when dealing with the Kindred community, all to keep the Kindred from getting to her family back home. Lies of omission frequently confuse her narrative. She’s very, very slow to trust people, especially vampires. She even kept much of the truth of her identity from Avery. But when she realized that she trusted him, she went all the way, throwing her lot behind him entirely. Did she tell him some of the truths she’d known all along? No. But did she stand by his side to the bitter end? Actually, she stood in front of him half the time.

Avery came to represent an important piece of Samantha’s personality as well. As part of her quest of self-discovery, Samantha has always been desperate for family. Bouncing from foster home to foster home for the first nine years of her life, Samantha grew up with the sense that she’d never really experienced unconditional love. It was always about behaving herself and not getting into trouble and, as a young child, she certainly couldn’t control the fact that she had nightmares, that she was different in some ephemeral sort of way. So when she was finally adopted by the Halpers, there was always a bit of distance perceived on her end. She came to realize that she was loved, but it wasn’t what she’d been seeking. And when she was finally presented with a path to finding her family, she immediately took it. In the end, her parents weren’t the beautiful dream of a loving and supportive force. But Avery was. And, having gotten a taste of that once, Samantha wants nothing more than to feel that sense of belonging again.

She certainly doesn’t “belong” as a Ventrue. In the Kindred world, there are certain stereotypes about the Ventrue. They’re seen as dignified statesmen who wield their unique powers of mind control like chisels, carefully cultivating and crafting Manchurian candidates and carving out small empires for themselves. Samantha doesn’t fit the mold. She wields her abilities more like a sledgehammer, acting in the moment, without leaving behind mindless drones. She understands the necessity of using her powers on others from time to time, but being so very close to her mortal life herself, she has an impressive amount of empathy for humankind. Samantha is able to put herself into the shoes of her victims. And she could forgive being compelled to fall asleep so that someone could make a quick getaway. But she could never forgive someone manipulating her memories. So she just doesn’t do it.

This empathy was also part of the reason why she wanted to support the dropping of the Masquerade. Given the circumstances of her birth, she feels that human beings have a right to know what else is out there. It’s the only way they can learn to protect themselves. Did she expect torches and pitchforks? Yes. Did she expect human beings to immediately embrace the fact that they were not at the top of the food chain? Hell, no. But she believed, and still believes, that coexistence is possible. At least if worked out in a thoughtful, mutually beneficial, respectful way.

So what is Samantha in a sentence? Samantha is a mouthy gifted student who was too smart for school—but not yet clever enough to be a vampiric big wig—who will choose her alliances based on the people she comes to know and trust, rather than on titles because, in the end, what she’s looking for is the unconditional love and sense of belonging that she never felt as a foster child. It’s a very long sentence. And Samantha is only at the beginning of what could, in fact, be a very long adventure.

(If you'd prefer to sum Samantha up in a song, it would be Everything That I Am by Phil Collins, for the record.)

Is this my family?
Can it really be them that I see?
My father and mother,
And in their arms can it really be me?

Being both young and inexperienced, a great deal of Samantha’s personality has derived from an external locus of identity. It’s impossible to look at the whole person without looking at the individual pieces of the puzzle.

Robert and Anne: After being bounced from foster home to foster home for the first nine years of her life, Robert and Anne were the first real parents Samantha ever knew. Although she was never quite able to see them as loving her unconditionally (she always had an unconscious sense that they’d eventually send her back), they contributed immensely to her ultimate personality. As stated above, they encouraged her to try new things and to find out who she was. They gave her a cultural identity as well, bringing her up Jewish. They also encouraged her to cultivate her mind, plying her with books and paying for a college education. It’s entirely possible that they did, in fact, love her unconditionally, but Samantha never had the chance to find out. In her final conversation with them, a few hours before the sky fell, Samantha warned them to stay inside that night, fearing for their safety in the wake of the Masquerade drop. Anne ended the conversation by telling Samantha that she loved her, words that would haunt Samantha deeply as she finally encountered her loveless biological parents.

Tom and Tina: If Robert and Anne gave Samantha a cultural identity, it was Uncle Tom and his girlfriend Tina who gave Samantha her passion. As the fun aunt and uncle, they were the ones who introduced her to new forms of expression. Music. Poetry. Most especially art. Samantha carried this love over into her immortal life, even finding ways to use it to communicate. It also became therapy for her, a place to channel her frustration. Although there’s nothing supernatural about her artistic talent, it’s strong. She can often capture an object, feeling, or message in her painting, if she sets her mind to it. This skill made her particularly valuable for some investigations as a vampire, serving as a sort of police sketch artist to capture the image of vampires, who don’t show up on film. It should also be noted that it was Tom’s death, protecting Samantha, that launched her into her first mad quest to find the truth. Losing her uncle felt like losing a piece of herself and it opened her up to the much bigger, scarier world. Indeed, she came to believe that if Tom had not been killed by a vampire, she would never have become one. But it was inevitable that he would be killed by a vampire, because she was vampire bait from the day she was born. This unending guilt cycle has never left her and has extended out to her other relationships. Samantha often blames herself and what she is for things that were clearly outside of her control.

Karen: If it weren’t for Karen, Samantha as she knew herself would not exist. Samantha would have grown up as the great experiment and nothing more. The people who contributed to her personality would never have touched her life and it’s very likely Samantha would never have had any agency at all. Because Samantha recognizes this fact, it’s hard for her to hate Karen. But it’s hard for her to feel grateful most of time. Karen, after all, set in motion many of the events of Samantha’s life by kidnapping her as a baby and putting her into foster care without any kind of protection against the vampires that dhampir naturally attract. Karen also lied and omitted crucial information about her origins after the Embrace, prompting Sam to seek out the truth on her own. Had Karen told her everything, it’s possible Samantha would never have put herself and her friends in California on a path to confrontation with the Predators. But who knows? Samantha will always play the “what if” game.

Avery: Avery was the family that Samantha had been seeking. She just didn’t know it. Her brother by Embrace, Avery was the very epitome of “stuck in the past.” Embraced in the 1950s, Avery had a hard time adjusting as the world around him changed. He was a perfect foil to Samantha’s youth and modern sensibilities. She never expected to feel close to him, but his work to uncover his own truth (the belief in a great conspiracy) intertwined with Samantha’s, leading the two of them to work together. Their unlikely partnership served them well, Avery doing the delicate work, Samantha as the blunt instrument. In the process, Samantha came to realize that she loved Avery.

The Ordo Dracul: After her Embrace, Samantha inherited a world of prejudice against the Ordo Dracul from Karen. Karen told her that they were cruel, brutal, and cold. She told her that their politics took no consideration for collateral damage, especially if it was human-shaped. With no basis of her own, Samantha believed what Karen said, at first. But in Los Angeles, she came into contact with members of the Ordo who defied her expectations, causing her to reevaluate. Notable friends she made among the Ordo include some remarkable women; Iris, Eve, and two different women named Grace. They, along with Avery, helped her to understand that no group or organization is a monolith. There are more than fifty shades of gray to anything. Like Avery, they became something of a family to Samantha. She was able to trust them with her secret and, despite her fears of becoming some kind of science project, they protected her and welcomed her and helped her to further investigate her own origins.

Daniel Jericho: As the head of the Carthian Movement in Los Angeles, Daniel Jericho’s relationship with Samantha was as much responsible for her decision to defect to the Ordo Dracul as Avery’s relationship with Samantha was. To Samantha, Jericho was the epitome of the “walking dead” she feared becoming. Although efficient and very good at his job, everything Jericho did served to remind Samantha that many vampires do not view human beings as people. His arrogant use of the word “kine” to refer to people, along with his constant complaints about young vampires, put fire in Samantha’s belly, giving her the motivation and the passion to reject the rigid social structure of Kindred life in favor of following her own path.

Powers/Abilities:

In the world of Vampire: The Requiem, there are a wide range of abilities available to vampires. Certain abilities are a matter of course, possessed by all vampires. Other abilities, known as disciplines, fall into the categories of in-clan and out-of-clan. In-clan disciplines can be learned automatically, by any vampire within the given clan with a little time and effort. Out-of-clan disciplines require a tutor who already knows the discipline. There are also several disciplines natural to covenants, rather than clans. Like out-of-clan disciplines, they require teaching as well. Samantha’s range of abilities runs the entire spectrum.

Natural vampire abilities: All vampires are immortal. They can be killed with great effort (beheading, fire, sunlight, and extreme amounts of damage from supernatural teeth and claws), but by and large, they are ageless and eternal, existing only at night. During the day, all Kindred, unless they study the Coil of Banes (see below), fall into a nearly comatose state of being. Stakes through the heart do not kill them, but rather, put them into a catatonic state until the stake is removed. They are essentially walking corpses that have no need to eat, breathe, or drink so their functions are supernatural in nature. Vampires can heal by using the blood in their system—referred to as vitae—to close wounds and restore their bodies to the condition they were in at the point of death. Wounds from blunt trauma and laceration can be healed with a thought, but wounds from supernatural sources take significantly longer.

It should be noted that vampires always revert to the state they were in at the point of death. As such, it’s extremely difficult for a vampire to make any kind of permanent change to their bodies. Any changes, from haircuts to tattoos, require expending an incredible amount of willpower, something only the oldest vampires know how to accomplish. The act of healing will always restore a vampire to that exact condition, no matter how grievous the wound. Similarly, wounds, scars, and other distortions that were a part of the vampire’s body at the point of death can never heal.

The blood of vampires has other supernatural capabilities beyond healing. A vampire can feed her blood to a mortal, causing one of two results. If the mortal is on the point of death, they will be turned into a vampire of the same clan as their sire. A healthy mortal instead becomes a ghoul, a supernaturally strong mortal with the ability to learn low levels of the vampire’s disciplines. Ghouls have the added bonus of becoming ageless for the duration of the time that the vampire blood is in their system (approximately one month), although once it clears out, ghouls will revert to their natural age. A ghoul could, theoretically, live forever, provided they always have a steady flow of vitae. It’s a difficult existence, however, since vitae is an addictive drug and vampires can be fickle. It should be noted that Sam (so far) has never made a childe or a ghoul.

Vampires can also “burn vitae” to temporarily enhance their strength or endurance. This doesn’t last more than three seconds, at most, but it can mean the difference between life and death. It is depleting, however. Vampires must keep at least four pints of blood in their bodies, or they run the risk of falling into a hunger frenzy, a state of panic so intense that they will not be able to distinguish friend from foe and they will rip through whatever they have to in order to get blood back into their systems.

The bite of a vampire is often referred to as “the Kiss.” Unlike in movies and TV shows, a vampire’s bite is an incredibly pleasant experience for the victim. It’s akin to sexual release. A vampire can feed in this manner and then lick the wound, closing it up and hiding any trace that they were ever present. This survival mechanism makes keeping the Masquerade significantly easier. When feeding (or in frenzy), a vampire’s true nature rises to the surface. The vampire’s face doesn’t change (other than the appearance of fangs), but the vampire radiates an aura of a predator. This is the Beast. Some vampire scholars view it as the parasite inhabiting the vampire’s body, keeping them alive. As mentioned in the appearance section, this Beast projects a message to other vampires, indicating how potent the individual’s blood is.

As part of their nature, vampires do not appear on film. Their images become blurry and impossible to identify, something seen as both a gift and a weakness, as it makes them easy to pick out to someone who knows what they’re looking for. With a little bit of willpower, a vampire can supernaturally cause their visage to stick on film, useful for things like getting a driver’s license, but this is a very, very temporary ability.

Ventrue disciplines: As a Ventrue, Samantha has several abilities that came to her naturally, with the Embrace. The first is an incredible resilience. Samantha’s body can take more punishment than the average vampire. She can even absorb a small level of fire damage, treating it like a knife wound rather than fire, in terms of healing. This ability comes at a price, however. Samantha must use her vitae to sustain it, which often leaves her at risk of hunger frenzy if she hasn’t fed or hasn’t fed well.

The Ventrue are known for possessing a discipline called Dominate. There are five levels of the ability and Samantha has mastered the first two. Command—the name of the first level—grants her the ability to issue a one-word command to someone (even a vampire) that they must fulfill for at least ten minutes. Favorite commands include “sleep” and “freeze” as Samantha typically uses this ability to make a quick get-away or break up some kind of a fight. Mesmerism—the second level of Dominate—allows her to issue a full, one-sentence command. This command must be fulfilled, provided it’s not suicidal. The Dominate will stay in effect until the command is fulfilled or until the victim is Dominated a second time with a counter command. The victim may or may not be fully aware of the fact that they’re being compelled, depending on the circumstances.

Most Ventrue also have a natural proclivity toward communing with animals. Samantha, however, has not dedicated time to the study of this art.

Ordo Dracul disciplines: The Ordo Dracul have developed a range of disciplines unique to the covenant. These are referred to as “coils.” Coils are different ways of transcending the vampiric condition. Samantha has dedicated some time to the study of the Coil of Banes, a range of disciplines specifically aimed as cancelling out certain weaknesses. As a student of the Coil of Banes, Samantha is better able to resist falling into a frenzy. She can also dedicate a little bit of willpower to staying awake during the day, something most vampires cannot do. With greater effort still, she can even walk in sunlight, during dusk and dawn. Although it’s painful for her, it’s nowhere near as devastating as it is for some other vampires.

Out-of-clan disciplines: Following the rain of fire that destroyed her world as she knew it, Samantha realized that she would need to learn additional disciplines, in order to survive in the uncertainty of not knowing where she’d be sleeping. To that end, she enlisted the help of two friends (Evening Star, a vampire yoga instructor, and Wolf, a bounty hunter) to teach her the art of Protean, native to the Gangrel clan, but not the Ventrue. At the first level, Protean allows vampires to project a predator’s taint that reads to other vampires as “I’m your equal or superior.” At the second level—called Haven of Soil—Samantha can burn vitae to sink down into the ground and, essentially, meld with it for any duration she chooses. In this state, she is safe from fire and sunlight. Everything she was wearing melds with her. Unless the soil she’s become a part of is disturbed, she can remain melded, in a more-or-less unconscious state, indefinitely. The third level of the discipline allows her to grow sharp, deadly claws that inflict supernaturally high amounts of damage on other supernatural creatures. These also assist her in climbing and cutting things.

Predator resistance: It should be noted that, due to the circumstances of her strange birth, Samantha appears to be immune to the disciplines of Predators. This would likely translate over to a certain measure of immunity against other vampiric races.

Mundane abilities: Not everything that Samantha is good at has a supernatural component to it. Indeed, the skills she tends to use the most are as human as anything. For example, Samantha’s greatest passion is for painting. As stated, she often lends her skills in realism to creating “police sketches” for vampiric investigations. Her truest love, however, is graffiti art. She has a singular knack for being able to convey an emotion or simple message in abstract shapes, often employing this skill to deliver messages.

Being a modern girl, Sam’s also good with computers. She has some limited abilities when it comes to hacking. Similarly, she has a measure of experience with firearms. Although she doesn’t like to use them, she’s cultivated a certain knack for trick shots. Given the choice, she will always aim to disarm or injure, rather than to kill. Using a revolver also serves as a very valuable cover for her abilities with Dominate. In a crowd of mortals, it’s much more believable for her to look someone in the eye and command them to “Freeze!” when she’s holding a weapon than if she’s doing it on her own. This is a trick she picked up from Avery.

As a former biology (with an art history double, and art minor) student, Samantha’s also very smart and very good at knowing how to do research. She can easily identify the valuable source material for most types of information. What she doesn’t know, she can figure out after a bit of effort. Perhaps the biggest gap in her knowledge is in the areas of occult, medicine, and zoology, but when it comes to academics, she’s a pro. Since becoming a vampire, she’s also gotten much better at being observant and investigating things. She doesn’t have Avery’s supernatural abilities to heighten his senses and see what can’t be seen, but she’ll notice a footprint that doesn’t match other footprints.

Samantha is particularly athletic. She was, after all, Embraced in the prime of her physical life. She has fast reflexes and is fleet of foot; she has been all her life. While she’s not going to be dodging bullets any time soon, nor is she going to be running any four minute miles, she’s quick in a confrontation, often catching herself while others around her fall into booby traps. This could possibly be the result of her Predator DNA, but it has yet to show any signs of the supernatural. Her natural dexterity also lends itself to picking locks, something she only does in relation to vampire business.

Sam's official character sheet and statistics can be found here.

Appearance: Samantha’s PB is a maniped version of Dianna Agron.

The most obvious and striking feature of Sam is, of course, the fact that she has blue hair. It’s a light cyan shade, with gentle beach curls that fall a little bit above mid-back. Of course, the truth is that her hair is actually a wig, one she wears to separate her mortal life from her dealings with Kindred. Hiding beneath those blue curls is dark red hair, thick and braided. Samantha almost never takes her wig off. She’s even been known to sleep in it. Anything to maintain her personal masquerade.

A true redhead, she has pale, white skin that is, more or less, free of blemishes. It comes with the territory of being born dhampir. Somehow, even the worst cuts and gashes managed to heal without leaving a trace of a scar. Acne was never a problem and, as it was, she preferred indoor activities to outdoor ones. Unlike some vampires from her world, Samantha does not look dead. She has a blush of health, a condition that occasionally accompanies the Embrace. This allows her to better pass for human.

Sam’s eyes are an intermediate color, somewhere between blue and green. Her driver’s license says "blue." She had to pick one, after all. And she loves to wear blue eyeliner. She packs it on thick, rimming both eyes all the way around, ending in slight points in the corners. This is more or less Sam’s only “girly” indulgence. She doesn’t wear any other kind of makeup, except for the occasional coat of dark blue or black nail polish which miraculously chips almost instantly, especially since she’s the type of person who loves to work with her hands.

Standing at five foot seven, Samantha has an hourglass figure. She’s curvy, but not overly so. After all, she was Embraced at the age of seventeen. She probably had a couple years of development left. Her figure is nicely toned, though. She made the most out of high school gym class.

Generally speaking, Sam dresses in a sort of “punk casual” attire. Ripped jeans, boat-necked tee shirts with pop culture references, black boots, and fishnet gloves are standard staples of her wardrobe. If the occasion calls for more of a show, she might wear black jeans without holes in them, fishnet tops over a black bra, or a Hot Topic corset with eye-hooks going up the front. She’s loathe to wear a dress, unless absolutely necessary. She does, however, like wearing jewelry. A personal favorite is a bottlecap necklace with a picture of Mark Sleepwalker, the main character of Space Wars (intentionally generic to avoid any and all fourth-walling issues, but think Luke Skywalker or Dave Lister--young, orphaned, and an unlikely hero). She also enjoys wearing finds from art fairs; long necklaces, charm bracelets, or the occasional broach. She doesn’t have pierced ears, so earrings are usually out. They’d get tangled up in her wig, anyway.

Sam’s carriage is sloppy, especially by vampire standards. Her shoulders often slump. She rarely sits on a chair the way a chair is meant to be sat upon and will sometimes just plop herself down on a desk or table. Really, she rarely sits at all, much preferring to stand. It makes her feel more imposing, especially when she’s going all-out with her punk look. When she gets nervous or agitated—which happens quite often—Sam has been known to pace, grinding the knuckles of her right hand into the heel of her left palm. She smiles and laughs when she’s uncomfortable. She’ll fiddle with her bottlecap necklace, tapping the beveled ridge against her lower lip.

It should be noted here that vampires from the world of Vampire: The Requiem project what’s known as a “predator’s taint” to other vampires. This represents a sort of aura that says, “I’m a predator and I’m one of you.” Vampires in this canon use the predator’s taint of others to determine whose blood is the most potent—and who is therefore the strongest. Samantha, however, has trained in an out-of-clan discipline known as Protean. At its most basic level, Protean allows a vampire to project a predator’s taint that registers to other vampires as, “this person is your equal or your superior.” Samantha’s actual predator’s taint, which is hidden under Protean, is fairly low. She’s not the lowest of the low, but she’s still remarkably young.

Samples:

Actionspam Sample:

Samantha meets someone even worse at being a vampire than she is

Prose Sample:

Samantha meets some guy named Stefan