Claire, the Vassal

Claire (a.k.a. the Vassal)

The favored retainer of the Louche King is an unassuming teenaged girl named Claire. However, her appearance is intentionally misleading - she is a vampire, and a particularly volatile one at that. To make matters worse, she has been gifted a rare medallion that shields her from the sun's deadly light.

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

She is a vampire of the Abalescii bloodline.

Body Features

Her arms are unusually long - in fact, she could touch the ground with the tips of her fingers while standing upright. This is a manifestation of her Abalescii blood.

Facial Features

She has a heart-shaped face and somewhat gaunt features, with wide eyes and thin lips.

Identifying Characteristics

She has a few. Her orange hair beads, her gait, and her "cape" all qualify. Her arms, of course, go without saying.
She also has a strange, swirling pattern of artistic scars covering her left upper arm, and a matching, symmetrical pattern of black tattoos covering her right upper arm. There is a red tattoo of a stylized eye at the top of her sternum, a black tattoo of a knife on the right side of her neck. Finally, she has a wound in the center of her back in the shape of a crown of brambles, which, through ritualistic magic, is kept constantly bleeding but does not actually pose a danger to her.

Physical quirks

Claire does not often walk. Instead, she tends to half-stumble, half-run; sometimes, when she feels most comfortable, she scuttles across the floor. She likes to climb things, too, and when given the chance, prefers to be further off the ground than not.

Special abilities

Her medallion affords her the ability to walk in sunlight without dying. She is still pained by it, but it is a mere inconvenience.
Additionally, her vampiric abilities allow her to dull her own perception of pain, scream loud enough to temporarily deafen those close to her. She can drink the blood of animals and even other vampires. In her vampiric form, she can hypnotize others into a violent frenzy, and her blood is caustic.
She has access to a few magical abilities gained from a warlock pact with Vanya the Proud. Through this pact magic, Claire can track those she's wounded, ritualistically shape bone, elongate her fingers into claws, enchant weapons to deal more harm to the living, create ritual wounds that, despite healing, never stop bleeding, and even give herself a familiar.

Apparel & Accessories

Her orange hair beads, as mentioned, are nearly always on her person. She quite likes hair accessories, often wearing flowers - sometimes dead - or ribbons in her hair.
Her clothing, however, can barely be described as rags: a canvas tunic, shredded at the bottom, over a grimy chest wrap and a coat which has been reduced to barely more than its sleeves. Her trousers are torn and muddied at the bottom, and her boots are actively falling to pieces. Hand wraps, made of ratty bandages, are also common. All of this, of course, in varied shades of brown, grey, and formerly-white.
One of the most distinctive parts of her wardrobe is her cape: a tapestry that has been shredded, torn, and haphazardly sewn back together in order to fit her slight frame. It is primarily black, with red trim and a red sigil resembling a ring of brambles in the center. Supposedly, not even the Louche King knows what the sigil represents. Like all of her clothing, the cape is in generally poor condition.

Specialized Equipment

Her nails are as sharp and as hard as steel. They're nearly half an inch long, and must carry all sorts of infections waiting to happen.

Mental characteristics

Employment

Claire works as the Louche King's personal retainer, bodyguard, and, on occasion, assassin. She occasionally does work for the Regnant Thief as well, or less often for the Council of Kalana as a whole.

Intellectual Characteristics

She is not very socially apt and can often be quite gullible. Additionally, she isn't very traditionally book-smart. That said, she is quite cunning and can prove to be a fearsome hunter and fighter.

Morality & Philosophy

Claire generally can be considered True Neutral - she does what most benefits her and guarantees her survival. Oaths are only as binding as they are beneficial, friends can quickly turn into unnecessary burdens, and strangers are most often fodder. The Louche King, however, affords her a measure of protection from the consequences of her actions.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

She wants to survive and to better her situation. She will claw her way to the top, given the opportunity. Currently, she plans to use "Sunless Starveling" as her moniker, should she ever make the council. She'll be a wonderful ally if the PCs ever find themselves in opposition to the Louche King. Probably.

Savvies & Ineptitudes

She is quite socially inept, including having an underdeveloped vocabulary and being somewhat childish in terms of conjugation and declension.

Vices & Personality flaws

She, like many vampires, treats blood as a delicacy.

Personality Quirks

She frequently scratches herself, often drawing blood or opening old wounds in doing so, apparently not having noticed. She often repeats certain words, usually in trios. She fiddles with a chain she keeps in her pocket when nervous, bored, or apprehensive. More generally, draw on your own experience of compulsive behaviors, since many of her behaviors are compulsions.

Hygiene

She bathes every so often, and washes her clothes slightly less often. However, she clearly doesn't know or care to do much more than a simple scrub. Nowhere is this more clear than the tangled rats' nest that is her hair.

Social

Contacts & Relations

She once had a romantic relationship with the leader of a vampire coven that she briefly joined, a Trilish named Zachariah. Their relationship ended when Zachariah chose to spare a vampire hunter that they had captured. Later that day, Claire tracked down and killed the vampire hunter and pinned the crime on Zachariah, turning him over to the city guard. Since then, she has sworn off romantic relationships, more out of disinterest than anything else.

Religious Views

She formerly worshipped Vanya the Proud as one of the Blood Saints, but since forming her pact has transitioned to mostly honoring rather than fully worshipping her, due to the more transactional nature of their relationship.

Hobbies & Pets

She has a homunculus familiar named Kitty, who vaguely resembles a featherless hawk with bat ears and a ten-inch, prehensile tail, tipped with a triangular bone growth. Kitty has pale, clammy skin, and soft patches of white fur on her back and chest.
Kitty and Claire can communicate telepathically so long as they are on the same plane, and Claire can at any time see through Kitty's eyes and hear through Kitty's ears in addition to her own. Kitty feeds on blood.

Speech

She occasionally has problems with declensions and conjugation, in the manner of a young child. More commonly, however, she is prone to inventing neologisms by "verbing" a noun, "nouning" an adjective, et cetera. She speaks with an eager rasp, like a smoker who hasn't spoken in a week.

Alignment

True Neutral

Current Location

Kalana

Life

766 AM 780 AM 14 years old

Circumstances of Death

She was kidnapped by a vampire coven and later turned when a young vampire fell for her

Birthplace

Tiilsdel

Current Residence

Kalana

Eyes

Dark brown, with conspicuously red undertones

Hair

Long, light brown, and tangled. She wears red-orange clay beads woven into her hair.

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Lightly tanned

Height

5'4"

Weight

93 lbs

Aligned Organization

Council of Kalana

Known Languages

She's barely fluent in Faeltri.