Colette LaPoint

Gender: Female

Age: 167 years old (17 years old at time of embrace)

Group: Nosferatu

Game: Vampire the Masquerade in New Orleans

Nationality

She is really Native American/Cherokee but has spent the past 150 years perfecting various accents, language mannerisms to pretend to be different ethnicities to blend more with where she goes. Currently, though she switches mostly between Cajun and French.

Job/Skills/Powers

Languages: English, French, Cherokee, Italian, Spanish. Chinese. Latin, Greek (ancient and modern)
Being sneaky
Intelligent
Good memory
Computers/technology
Acute Vision
Acute Hearing
Disgusting: This allows the vampire to contort her body and face in all kinds of ways. She can drool blood, pop her eyes out to double their width, spontaneously have growths on your face, push your tongue three feet out of your mouth, etc.
Bonuses for feeding on rats (Clan bonus)
Disciplines:
Animalism: (very advanced) brings the vampire closer to their animalistic nature. This not only allows them to communicate with and gain dominance over creatures of nature but gives them influence over the Beast itself.
Auspex: (average) Grants the vampire supernatural senses
Celerity: (average) Grants the vampire quickness and reflexes
Obfuscate: (very advanced) Grants the vampire the ability to conceal themselves
Potence: (very advanced)endows vampires with physical vigor and preternatural strength. Vampires with the Potence Discipline possess physical prowess beyond mortal bounds.

Clan

Nosferatu
Faction: Camarilla
Nicknames: The Clan of the Hidden, Sewer Rats, Lepers (archaic), Priors, Nossies

The archetypal Nosferatu resembles Max Shreck's Count Orlok, though the curse has any number of variations. The Nosferatu are the spymasters of the dead, collecting information and selling it for a dear price. They are also the masters of the underground, living in the sewers for protection.

In both the Camarilla and Sabbat, the Nosferatu are famous information brokers and spymasters. While this is partly supported by their use of the Obfuscate and Animalism disciplines, the Nosferatu also emphasize information interchange as part of clan culture. Nosferatu invest an awful lot in teaching their childer with riddle games, memorization exercises and other activities which emphasize sharing and hiding information. Most Nosferatu tend to present themselves as antisocial creatures and as they seldom play the games of Elysium, instead focusing on the acquisition of knowledge to make themselves irreplaceable for vampiric society.

The Nosferatu have a deeply ingrained complex about physical beauty, especially with clans like the Toreador. Nosferatu will tend to charge Toreador higher prices, and make the higher clans crawl through humiliating or disgusting tunnels to actually negotiate with them. Similarly, Nosferatu will often accentuate their hideousness by cultivating an array of disgusting physical habits. Some of the Nosferatu who dwell underground can develop a penchant for bizarre forms of art, in particular for music, gardening and sculpture. Rumors tell of the development of acoustic subterranean chambers – some of which employ channeled water, and of fantastical gardens with fungi the size of trees. The greatest work of Nosferatu art is the Escalera, a giant sculpture of twisted metal and piping that spans an underground chasm in Lima. On several cases where Nosferatu have embraced a caitiff, the childe has been exiled or killed. Nosferatu also tend to use Obfuscate for practical jokes involving their appearance, such as dropping a discipline's use for a brief instant and reveling in the effects.

The most bizarre relationships can occur between Nosferatu and mortals. Even the most hard-bitten Nosferatu may discover a weakness for a certain human or types of humans. Living as they do in places many would consider to be Hell, there is a long tradition of the Nosferatu offering help to others like them. There are many, many cases of cruel Kindred preying on homeless people, children or mental patients who have inexplicably been beaten black and blue and left somewhere as a warning to others. Cliché as it may be, many orphanages, scholarships and self-help organizations owe at least part of their funding to the Sewer Rats. Living in the gutter, there are a lot of Nosferatu who want to help those who still can get out of it. Unlike the Toreador and the Ventrue, they seldom if ever brag about their accomplishments, and most outside the clan are unaware of them.

The Nosferatu tend to embrace two classes of people: first are those for whom the Embrace is a step up, such as the homeless, the hopelessly antisocial, derelicts, the mentally ill, the emotionally damaged, the flawed, vagrants or other people at the bottom of the totem pole, often out of a feeling of kinship with them. The second class are those for whom the Embrace is a step-down, such as beauty queens or people from privileged backgrounds. Nosferatu are notorious for revenge Embraces, and the resulting Cleopatras often lead miserable lives within the clan.

Weakness

Enemy: level 3: She made enemies by helping the kindred that took down the last prince.
Prey Exclusion: She will not feed off of children or drink blood gained from children.
Bane
Repulsiveness: Hideous and vile, all Nosferatu count as having the Repulsive Flaw (-2) and can never increase their rating in the Looks Merit. In addition, any attempt to disguise themselves as non-deformed incurs a penalty to the dice pool equal to the character's Bane Severity (this includes the Obfuscate powers Mask of a Thousand Faces and Manifold Guise). However, most do not break the Masquerade by just being seen.

Compulsion
Cryptophilia: vampires become consumed with a hunger for secrets, to know that which few or no one knows, almost as strong as that for blood. They also refuse to share secrets with others, except in strict trade for greater ones.

Physical Appearance

Her true form is horrible and no resemblance of what she once looked liked remains.

She can change her appearance at will but ofter will appear with long brunette hair, brown eyes, 5'5" -5'7" about 115-130 lbs.

Personality and interests

Colette is highly intelligent and loves learning new things. She is often found reading or hiding trying to find out the secrets of others. Sometimes her snooping takes place in person or through others and sometimes it takes place by hacking computers.
She tends to have an affinity for children and will give money many times to children's hospitals or causes that help children. Especially, any organizations that help burn victims.

History

Colette was embraced in 1870, before then she was called Adsila. Her family had been relocated to a reservation in Oklahoma. The move had been long and people died but fortunately, her family managed to survive.

When they reached the reservation she soon met Taliwolhali, the son of the Chef who was very ill upon arrival. Circumstances had drawn the groups together but social structure demanded they have a chief so once Tailiwolhai's father passed he set out to marry Adsila, as she was considered quite beautiful and one of the few of marrying age, she was 17.

However, everything changed when a fire raged through the camp. It took the lives of many of the people at the camp including most of Adsila's family. Taliwolhai was unscathed as his part of the camp had been saved from the fire but Adsila had been burned severely. While she was alive she would always be scarred and in pain, not something Taliwolhai wanted for the wife of a Chef so he called off the wedding and proceeded marry another girl.

One day while standing by a deep lake, wondering if she should just end it all as she was now considered useless by the tribe, she heard a noise in the woods. Thinking it was nothing she turned back to the lake, moving closer to the inevitable. She took off the necklace, which had been carved from wood, of the butterfly on top of a flower. The same flower she was named for the one people used to say she was a beautiful as but that would no longer be. Placing the necklace, as a good bye, by the lake she started to go in. Soon enough she would be without the pain she felt; it would be better...
"Here let me help you," the man who approached her said as he made his way to the cold stone bed which she was upon. He helped her sit up, she was cold and her soul ached with hunger.
"Drink this." he said as he gave her a cup filled with a dark thick liquid.
She grabbed the cup and drank it down in one gulp. She wanted more, she needed more, that wasn't enough.
"Settle down." he took a knife out of his pocket and slit his wrist handing it to her. "Drink." He said
She didn't stop to think of the why or the how as she grabbed his wrist and drank. It was sweet, thick and delicious. Blood, it was blood. Adsila wanted to push it away, but she couldn't seem to stop.
"Enough" he said. She couldn't stop. "Enough!" he yelled, she still couldn't stop. The man pushed her off of him and she fell backwards back onto the bed. She breathed deeply and managed to sit back up, this time under her own power. It was then she got a good look at the man.
She had never seen anyone, so, deformed in her life. He was hideous, pieces of skin falling off of him, one of his blue eyes had been cut out of his head, grey hair looked like it had been removed and pieced back on, his left arm hung backwards and she could only imagine what he looked like with less clothes on. Yet, she didn't recoil in fear, instead, she was intrigued by him.
"My name is Leon. Or at least that is what you'll know me as. The man spoke, she realized he sounded odd to her like he was not of her kind, yet, he knew her language. "You must have many questions, please ask."
"Where are you from?"
"The other side of the world. A place called France."
"How do you know my language?"
"I lived with people like you for a year or so."
"Where am I?"
"You are not too far from your home."
"May I leave?"
"You want to go home?"
"I..." But she stopped herself from saying more, after all what did she have to go home to. "
Leon shook his head. "You can't ever go home. I figured attempting to kill yourself might have been a sure sign you don't really want to, anyway."
"I don't understand."
"Here let me show you." He handed her a small mirror.
Adsila lifted the mirror and placed it to her face. She stared at the reflection, unable to believe what her eyes were telling her. She was ugly, awful, a monster. Her face had bits of skin falling off, her eyes had turned from brown to brown with a red streak through them, her long black hair was coming off in patches. She inspected her arms and legs, skin falling off there as well, her fingers blackened, her fingernails gone. Suddenly reality overtook her and she screamed and dropped the mirror.
"What did you do to me?" She yelled.
"I'll answer when you calm down," he said firmly, but, calmly.
She breathed, calmed down and asked again. This time he answered her. He had turned her. She would learn the meaning of Nosferatu, she would learn how to hide her actual apprentice, she would learn what it all meant. She had gotten, in a way, what she wanted.
She would change her name to Colette in order to hide her origins. Leon, however, in private would always call her Adsila.

She managed to learn enough to be able to travel with Leon. They spent much time hiding in the shadows but went many places and saw many things. He took her to New Orleans about ten years ago and they set up their own lair far from the eyes of others. For a while they lived together and became known as the information brokers of the town. Eventually, though Leon wanted to travel again but Colette did not. She stayed in New Orleans and Leon left to travel saying he'd return, that was about three years ago now. Colette became an information broker for an underground network that wanted to get rid of the prince, at the time.
Unknown to her someone who doesn't like that, knows about it and has become her enemy.

Favourite Sayings

"I'll tell you secrets; if you tell me secrets"
"I know things you wouldn't want to know."
"You do realize that'll cost you extra."

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This character is owned by: Cindy