Name: Claudia
Door: N/A

Canon: The Vampire Chronicles
Canon Point: Post-Death

Age: 20 (physically; aged up from 5), 86 (mentally)
Appearance: PB: Julia Garner

History: here

During her previous time in Duplicity, Claudia took on the role of the entrepreneur. In order to live her life in the sort of luxury that she prefers, she snatched up any opportunity she could to make money. From co-owning the vampire club, Fangtasy, to inheriting a massage parlor and even a BDSM hypnotherapy business, her waking nights have been immersed in work. Perhaps this hasn't been all to her benefit--she's historically struggled to maintain relationships, particularly where it came to keeping contract partners. Though there are a few souls in the city that she can't deny having an attachment with, she's just as confident that the feelings she has are as unrequited now as they were in her lifetime pre-Duplicity. Before her unexpected vanishing from the city, she was beginning to make personal changes to try and give more of her time back to the people in her life outside of a working environment--has even tentatively extended the olive branch to her estranged fathers each time they've been in the city with her. Maybe this time around, things will be different.

CR AU (Optional): N/A

Personality:

Charming:

Claudia has spent the entirety of her life as something to be fawned over as a doll. Because of this, she's mastered the art of presenting herself as something weak, delicate, and in need of care. Something precious, something to treasure and treat with kindness. She's well versed in etiquette and knows how to make friends, coercing perfect strangers of all ages off the street and into a private place of her choosing. Although she doesn't have the biggest proclivity to play with her food, she does like to observe. Even without understand human emotion, she's very good at reflecting it for her own purposes. In presenting herself the way that she wishes to be seen, or that others wish to see her. Her mind having been that of a grown woman for a long time, and having spent four years in Duplicity previously, she now knows how to make the most of her charm in a way that more properly fits an adult woman as opposed to a young child.

Hateful:

Hatred, disdain, and grudge holding is the fire that's spurred her forward through her countless years of discontent and want. Hate that she was forced to live in a body of weakness, an unchanging child, everyone's pretty plaything. Hate that nobody understands her, relates to her, or saw her as the woman she had long since grown into when it didn't reflect on the outside. She had love for at least one of her fathers, but carried an equal amount of hate for that love, too, because she could not and can not forgive him for what he did to make her into what she was for so long. She can't forgive anyone for anything they've done to keep her as if in a gilded cage, she can't forgive mortals for being able to grow and change while she alone was forced for so very long to remain trapped in an inadequate body. Claudia hates so hard that when she loses something that she hates, it feels almost like loss. She regrets removing Lestat from her life because without his presence, she lost something to focus her rage on. Instead, it had to turn inward. It had to turn to harder, more painful subjects. Without her hate, she wouldn't know who she was. It's the only emotion she knows in herself. There's nothing else she has ever truly experienced, or understood, half so much.

Claudia has been so driven by her obsessive hatred that even arriving in Duplicity, she'll find things to keep her incensed. The knowledge that Lestat is in the city with her, alive and well, the potential to be a submissive either now or in the future and be beholden to anyone else, and that any event could take away her agency would anger her, keeping her stuck with the same feelings she had before her death. When all she's truly ever known is pain and anger, it's become second nature to seek it out like a crutch, filling in the void of one motivation for another. Although it's not necessarily a facet of herself that she's cognizant of or in control of, it's one that she'd accept with a misplaced sort of pride if confronted by. Better to hate the world and keep it at arm's distance than to get hurt in a reconciliation.

Manipulative:

This is a woman who knows how to get what she wants; she was raised to be that way. Of her two fathers, Lestat taught her how to hunt and how to kill: but more than that, how to act. How to play the hunter, the cat and mouse game, to dance your prey into your arms without them ever knowing they're in danger. Treating the world as an opponent she must study and master, she's learned over the years how to cause others to fall into the traps she sets, at least when it suits her. It's never been a particular challenge for her to overtake the living, but through steady practice and patience, her tactics even began to work on other vampires. For a while, at least, until her choices ultimately led to her untimely demise. Although this is a skillset and aspect of her personality that helped her in many ways in the body she was trapped in for so long, it's an unwavering part of her. No matter how she presents, she hardly knows how to talk to anyone without catering her words and actions to a specific purpose, whether or not that purpose is nefarious. At no point in her time in Duplicity has she let go of her manipulative ways--and perhaps this is why she struggles to make meaningful connections with others. Can you truly expect someone to love you and stay with you when you only ever show them what you want them to see?

Apathetic:

Claudia has never been able to relate to anyone or anything around her. Because of this, she's unable to understand or empathize with humanity, or even other vampires. Unlike them, she can't remember a time where she was human; the few years of her mortal lifetime were so fleeting that they evaporated from her as if they never were. She expresses often that she's unable to place herself as being a part of any kind of community due to her complete lack of feeling for anyone or anything. That she feels at odds with herself, and so utterly alone. This desperate, gnawing emptiness fueled an insatiable urge to find others of her kind for most of her life. Not just vampires, but vampires who, like her, could share in her emptiness. Finding them, though, she at once discovered she despised them all. Again, she could feel only more distant from the world around her. Finding herself in a new, adult body wouldn't change this sense of separation from the world at large. There's nothing to fill the missing time she had as a mortal, as something fully alive. As far as she knows, she's never truly been something that anyone can relate to: she is her own creature, completely alone and completely centered on herself. Even in Duplicity, where one can find creatures of all kinds from any given world, Claudia has yet to find anyone who understands her in a way that she'd give anything for. At this point, it's almost scarier to make that connection, for fear of losing it. Better, instead, to remain at arm's length from everyone.

Powers and Abilities:

Due to Claudia's (collective) age, which isn't outside the realm of a regular mortal's, and a lack of outside influences in her growth as a supernatural being, her vampiric abilities are limited to what one would expect. This includes: enhanced strength, speed, and evasiveness (though during her time as a child she was often easily overpowered by other vampires in strength and therefore had to rely solely on the latter two), the ability to bend the human mind to her will just enough to make them pliable to her demands, an ethereal beauty that often disarms, and rapid healing of any injuries she sustains. Her vampiric bite causes a euphoric effect in her victims, as well.

She also, of course, is immortal, but this immortality is dependent on certain factors. She does not age and she can not grow ill, but she tires, she burns, she can be beheaded, and she can burn in the sunlight. Claudia must live on blood to survive, and she must feed frequently. When she hasn't fed, her skin is blanched white and cold to the touch, but freshly fed she appears much softer, pinker, warmer.

Inventory:

1. Madeleine's Locket
2. A Painted Sketch of Louis
3. A Book on Vampire Lore

Samples: action and network

Name: Claudia
Door: Left

Canon: The Vampire Chronicles
Canon Point: Post-Death

Age: 20 (physically; aged up from 5), 70+ (mentally)
Appearance: PB: Julia Garner

History: here
Personality:

(-) Hateful

Hatred, disdain, and grudge holding is the fire that's spurred her forward through her countless years of discontent and want. Hate that she was forced to live in a body of weakness, an unchanging child, everyone's pretty plaything. Hate that nobody understands her, relates to her, or saw her as the woman she had long since grown into when it didn't reflect on the outside. She had love for at least one of her fathers, but carried an equal amount of hate for that love, too, because she could not and can not forgive him for what he did to make her into what she was for so long. She can't forgive anyone for anything they've done to keep her as if in a gilded cage, she can't forgive mortals for being able to grow and change while she alone was forced for so very long to remain trapped in an inadequate body. Claudia hates so hard that when she loses something that she hates, it feels almost like loss. She regrets removing Lestat from her life because without his presence, she lost something to focus her rage on. Instead, it had to turn inward. It had to turn to harder, more painful subjects. Without her hate, she wouldn't know who she was. It's the only emotion she knows in herself. There's nothing else she has ever truly experienced, or understood, half so much.

Claudia has been so driven by her obsessive hatred that even arriving in Duplicity, she'll find things to keep her incensed. The knowledge that Lestat is in the city with her, alive and well, the potential to be a submissive either now or in the future and be beholden to anyone else, and that any event could take away her agency would anger her, keeping her stuck with the same feelings she had before her death. When all she's truly ever known is pain and anger, it's become second nature to seek it out like a crutch, filling in the void of one motivation for another. Although it's not necessarily a facet of herself that she's cognizant of or in control of, it's one that she'd accept with a misplaced sort of pride if confronted by. Better to hate the world and keep it at arm's distance than to get hurt in a reconciliation.

(-) Apathetic

Claudia has never been able to relate to anyone or anything around her. Because of this, she's unable to understand or empathize with humanity, or even other vampires. Unlike them, she can't remember a time where she was human; the few years of her mortal lifetime were so fleeting that they evaporated from her as if they never were. She expresses often that she's unable to place herself as being a part of any kind of community due to her complete lack of feeling for anyone or anything. That she feels at odds with herself, and so utterly alone. This desperate, gnawing emptiness fueled an insatiable urge to find others of her kind for most of her life. Not just vampires, but vampires who, like her, could share in her emptiness. Finding them, though, she at once discovered she despised them all. Again, she could feel only more distant from the world around her. Finding herself in a new, adult body wouldn't change this sense of separation from the world at large. There's nothing to fill the missing time she had as a mortal, as something fully alive. As far as she knows, she's never truly been something that anyone can relate to: she is her own creature, completely alone and completely centered on herself. It's possible that in a city like Duplicity, where creatures from all types of worlds can be found, she's more likely than ever to find someone she can relate to...but she's just as likely to write them off. Her desperate attempts to find vampires ended so poorly for her before that she won't be keen to take the risk of opening up again. There's safety in apathy.

(-) Self-Loathed

Her existence causes her unending pain; she hates being alive, hates being what she is. As, for so many decades, she longed so desperately for a change that could never come, Claudia spent her lifetime surrounding herself in distractions. She's honed her mind like a blade and wielded her given body like a key that could unlock any door with the right strategy. But for all the tactics, all the splendor, all the love that anyone could give her, it all boils down to nothing. She's lived a lifetime being manhandled, of being inadequate, of having restrictions that no other vampire has to worry about. Having never been able to do so many things that others take for granted, there's a hurt stuck deep inside of her. It rots her heart. She bottles it and bottles it, but it's always there inside of her, bitter and festering.

This is not a feeling that she can easily overcome, even with a body that others can more easily accept, and that will allow her the chance to experience many things that were once barred from her. Even being a grown woman with new opportunities, she has to live now with the knowledge of her repeated and highlighted failures, her crimes, and the things that she has lost. She drove Louis, the only one to truly love her, to his breaking point out of cruelty and a desperation to take something back for herself...but it only drove a rift between them, and she found herself more miserable than ever. She attempted to destroy her maker, and this will mark her forever as a vampire that could never be accepted in her community. Now more than ever, knowing that her isolation can only be blamed on the consequences of her actions, there's no way to stop herself from hating who and what she is.

(-) Dependent

She's never been able to live her life in a way that didn't involve being cared for, in some capacity, by other people. She longs for independence, but doesn't know how to have it. Claudia's never had a job, never made money, never had to provide for herself. As she aged mentally, she did what she could to take on a more commanding role, often ordering from shops as if she didn't have the appearance of a child. Without someone to provide for her, however, she's always been lost. When things came to a head with Louis, and it seemed he desired to leave her, the only way she could even assume to survive was to make sure that she had another caregiver. And even that, she couldn't provide for herself, unable as she's always been to make anyone into a vampire like herself. Sometimes knowing it all too keenly and sometimes not being aware of it at all, despite her feelings of loneliness she'd be nothing if she were ever left on her own.

It's salt in the wound that finding herself in an adult body wouldn't change her need of being supported. While she'll suddenly find a new set of options open for her, supported by a moderate increase in her physical vampiric abilities, she'll be coming from a human lifetime full of being incapable. Although she was very clever when it came to managing finances, they were finances that she did nothing to obtain for herself. Coming to Duplicity, empty-handed and with absolutely no experience earning a living, she'll feel forced, pressured, to give herself over to the control of others in order to survive. Being under the thumb of others is infuriating, but far less daunting than learning to be truly on her own.

(+) Quick-Witted

Aggressively smart, sharp, and cunning, Claudia spent a great majority of her life in silence. She's always been obsessed with learning. Learning about herself, about the world, about her kind. Books are some of her most treasured possessions, and she happily steals from private libraries if it means obtaining new knowledge. And in her intelligence she found a weapon that she could use where her body was lacking: in her ability to read people, intentions, patterns of behavior, she's found fatal flaws of character. She poisoned her father, even predicted her own execution. She's discovered truths about herself and in others that they themselves are blind to. Even finding herself with a new body in Duplicity, she'll channel her intelligence elsewhere: into ways she can overcome the restrictions placed by LIES. Into ways she can live however she wants, without worrying about the scrutiny of others. And of course: how to break others from worlds she could have never even imagined.

(-) Manipulative

This is a woman who knows how to get what she wants; she was raised to be that way. Of her two fathers, Lestat taught her how to hunt and how to kill: but more than that, how to act. How to play the hunter, the cat and mouse game, to dance your prey into your arms without them ever knowing they're in danger. Treating the world as an opponent she must study and master, she's learned over the years how to cause others to fall into the traps she sets, at least when it suits her. It's never been a particular challenge for her to overtake the living, but through steady practice and patience, her tactics even began to work on other vampires. For a while, at least, until her choices ultimately led to her untimely demise. Although this is a skillset and aspect of her personality that helped her in many ways in the body she was trapped in for so long, it's an unwavering part of her. No matter how she presents, she hardly knows how to talk to anyone without catering her words and actions to a specific purpose, whether or not that purpose is nefarious.

(+) Charming

Claudia has spent the entirety of her life as something to be fawned over as a doll. Because of this, she's mastered the art of presenting herself as something weak, delicate, and in need of care. Something precious, something to treasure and treat with kindness. She's well versed in etiquette and knows how to make friends, coercing perfect strangers of all ages off the street and into a private place of her choosing. Although she doesn't have the biggest proclivity to play with her food, she does like to observe. Even without understand human emotion, she's very good at reflecting it for her own purposes. In presenting herself the way that she wishes to be seen, or that others wish to see her. As an adult, it wouldn't be too hard of a transition to adapt from being a cherub to an angel, continuing the illusion that she's weak and helpless and something to be loved and coveted. Her mind having been that of a grown woman for a long time, her mannerisms would match her new body, leaving no room for doubt that she is as she was always meant to be. Claudia's aptitude for being lovely will be nothing but a boon in trying to establish a new life for herself.

(-) Expensive

Although she was born in squalor and discovered by her vampiric parents among filth and disease, once her immortality was granted she was thrust into a world of exquisite luxury. When she was still a child in mind as well as in appearance, she was given everything she could ever dream of and more: a beautiful bedroom full of murals, dolls and dresses and books and lessons. Anything she asked for, anything at all, or even anything that simply seemed it would suit her doll-like features, was given promptly into her tiny hands. Her fathers, too, were paragons of wealth: Louis the owner of an estate, and Lestat a man with a taste for finery (and little else).

Fortunately, while Claudia generally remained completely outside of taking responsibility for herself or her wants and needs, she realized quickly that an extravagant lifestyle takes a certain amount of skill to maintain. She learned the importance of handling finances from Louis in order to maintain her taste for the affluent, not keen on ending up like Lestat: spending and spending until there was nothing left, needing to find a new victim to play banker. She's not happy when she can't have her accommodations met to her high standards, but doesn't trust anyone else as much as she trusts herself.

Powers and Abilities:

Due to Claudia's (collective) age, which isn't outside the realm of a regular mortal's, and a lack of outside influences in her growth as a supernatural being, her vampiric abilities are limited to what one would expect. This includes: enhanced strength, speed, and evasiveness (though during her time as a child she was often easily overpowered by other vampires in strength and therefore had to rely solely on the latter two), the ability to bend the human mind to her will just enough to make them pliable to her demands, an ethereal beauty that often disarms, and rapid healing of any injuries she sustains.

She also, of course, is immortal, but this immortality is dependent on certain factors. She does not age and she can not grow ill, but she tires, she burns, she can be beheaded, and she can burn in the sunlight. Claudia must live on blood to survive, and she must feed frequently. When she hasn't fed, her skin is blanched white and cold to the touch, but freshly fed she appears much softer, pinker, warmer.

Inventory:

1. Madeleine's Locket
2. A Painted Sketch of Louis
3. A Book on Vampire Lore

Samples: here and here