”Be not afraid, for if your spirit is stalwart and your heart is good, there is nothing to fear at all.”
Basics
”The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”
Nickname: At various times and by various people, Ekaterina has been called Kit, Kitty, Kitten, Katya (the actual Russian diminutive of her name), Kate, and various other diminutives.
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Race: Human
Role: Guardian/Prefect
Appearance
“Without eyes, it is difficult to care for the visual. I have never understood why those who see seem so obsessed with it.”
Hair Color: Golden-blonde
Eye Color: White
Skin Tone: Peach/pink
Height: 5’7”
Weight: Perhaps 125lbs
Physical Description: Ekaterina is crowned with a generous length of thick golden-blond hair, which falls in vaguely-wavy sheets to the backs of her knees, give or take. In the right light, such as that outside on a bright day, it can take on silvery highlights, giving the illusion of being frosted or something of that nature. Oftentimes, this is braided for convenience, and she finds taking care of it to be a daily ritual that helps keep her centered and calm. It is very soft to the touch, which is more important to her than how it looks, actually, for reasons that will become obvious. Her complexion is generally pale and smooth, though it lacks the slightly-unnatural whiteness of the average vampire’s, having peachy hues to prevent her from looking like a sheet.
Kitty’s eyes are the uniform white of the blind from afar, and as this would suggest, she cannot see. Upon closer inspection, they’re actually an incredibly-pale blue, though in the end this is of little consequence to anyone as far as she can tell. Her height is just slightly above the average for a female, proportionally more in her legs than her torso. Indeed, her limbs are of the long, elegant variety, and though she is quite slender and reedy in construction, there is a certain subtle curve to her, something that she takes no care to emphasize. She wears the version of the school uniform with the longer skirt rather than the short one, and it as well as anything else she wears is kept pristine and orderly. These are things she had to take great care to learn, and she prefers to do them properly. Always affixed to her sleeve is a peculiar strip of black fabric, tied around her bicep and displaying in red thread a house crest, a very old and well-known one.
She is clearly healthy, and while there is a certain amount of tone to her shape, she is not in any way muscular, and those disposed to guess that she would be physically weak are quite correct. She is, however, flexible and with good reflexes, for whatever that might be worth.
Personal Details
”In order to love others as they deserve, we must first love ourselves, for all our faults. Love is a gift; we give of ourselves to someone else. What would we be saying to them if we were giving something we did not value?”
Potential Interest: TBA
Skills and Abilities:
Music: Despite her relative youth, Ekaterina has prodigious talent in the areas of singing and piano-playing. She has been trained in opera vocals and classical music, and as a result, her ability to hear and recognize sounds is quite something. She has perfect pitch, and can distinguish people by things like the way they walk and their breathing patterns. Her memory for voices is near-perfect.
Negotiation: If there was ever a person who came across as nonthreatening, Ekaterina is it. Her personality lends itself well to moderating disputes between other people, and keeping the Night Class’s secrets secret. Additionally, her extreme attentiveness to nonvisual details means that she can pick up on subtle, unconscious clues in people’s vocal inflection and breaths, making her a good judge of honesty and emotion, even when these things are being actively concealed from her. It can sometimes seem like the blind girl sees everything, though of course she is fallible like anyone else. Still, she’s smart, empathetic, and observant.
First Aid: She’s actually fairly good with medicines and bandages, though she can sometimes require help actually locating whatever she needs to treat. This is something she learned by practicing on herself and her brother during their rather… rough childhood.
Other: Ekaterina is a straight-A student, and her warden pays for all of the books she needs for school to be translated into Braille so she can read them. She also has voice-dictation software for essays and emails and so forth. She is usually to be seen accompanied by a seeing-eye dog, a German shepherd she named Mischa. When she doesn’t have him nearby, she does possess a sturdy white cane which she can use to navigate.
Personality: Kitty is a composed, collected, mature individual who despite this still lacks knowledge of many of the dangers of the “real” world. She has from an early age been rather protected, first by her parents, then her older brother, and finally by her warden. That said, she isn’t particularly spoiled or used to getting her way, just… sheltered.
Despite this, or perhaps because of it, she is able to cope well with most new situations, and rarely loses her unflappable composure. She is a creature of peace and gentleness, mostly, and though surprisingly complex, she may not seem so from casual acquaintance. She has the patience of a saint, the tolerance of a martyr, and that is quite enough to get her through most of the tense situations that can crop up when one is a prefect. Not a combatant, she instead relies on negotiation and wit to see the peace kept, though she is perfectly aware that not all of her fellows do the same. She rather abhors violence, actually, and has never been properly taught to defend herself in any way. (This is, in fact, partially what Mischa is for, though she does not know this.)
She’s not by any means humorless, though, she just won’t laugh at anyone else’s expense (unless, perhaps, they’re asking for it). Jokes she enjoys, sarcasm she may occasionally even employ, and people with wit or interesting things to say are her favorite kind. She cannot, obviously, judge anyone based on the way they look, and the notion of being prejudiced based on the way someone sounds, she finds absurd at best, which makes her an excellent person to talk to.
Background
“Nobody should feel sorry for me. All my life, I have been protected and cared for. I could ask no more than that.”
History: Born to a poor farming family outside of St. Petersburg, Russia, Ekaterina Petrovna Vasileva could actually see until her tenth year of life. At that point, a degenerative disease stole from her the use of her eyes. The medical bills she incurred because of this drove her family to destitution, but none of them ever expressed the least resentment for this. They were forced to sell the farm and move into a tiny apartment in a seedy part of the city, and there they stayed until she reached age thirteen.
It was then that the attack happened, and she remembers it with too much clarity for comfort. Mad vampires, rogue and insane, broke into the home, having followed her mother home from her job as a cleaner. Rushing to defend his wife, her father urged Ekaterina and her older brother Dmitri into a closet, where they hid. Both were spared, and saved the sight of their parents’ grisly murders, but not the sounds. To this day, her mother’s screams and the sound of crunching bones and tearing flesh are the stuff of her nightmares.
When it was all over, the siblings were left with no way to make money and no place to live. Taking up residence on the streets of St. Petersburg, they struggled in vain to find a way to survive. Dmitri took up pickpocketing for lack of a better option, and soon he was instructing Kitty to help, by distracting large crowds of people. Ekaterina, always a talented singer, took up a public corner in the downtown area and sang for donations, and Dmitri sticky-fingered the patrons who weren’t quite generous enough. It was in this way that they first met him: Ivan Rasputinov, a gentleman of great wealth and social standing, and also one of the oldest and most powerful pure-blood vampires in existence.
Fascinated by the little girl and the ephemeral nature of such human talents, he was a daily walker past her spot, and always left gratuitous sums of money. Dmitri realized that he must have a lot more if he was willing to do that, and tried to pickpocket the man. Needless to say, he failed, but the whole encounter ended with an offer from Ivan: Ekaterina would perform at his next social gathering, for an amount of money the siblings could scarcely believed. They agreed, and after her success at this, he took both of them in, making them his wards. It was a strange relationship, and at times, Ekaterina felt more like a pet than anything, but she and her brother both passed most of their teenaged years with Ivan, who paid for further lessons in upper-class etiquette and music for both siblings. He also sent both of them to Cross Academy, revealing to them just what he was, and both have served as human prefects at the school.
Ivan’s family is well-known, and his reputation alone (and the armband that marks her as of his household) protects her where her feeble human strength would not. One does not toy lightly with that which belongs to Ivan Rasputinov.
"Each of us is born free, and yet everywhere, we are in chains.”
Basics
"Just because a life is of a different kind from mine does not make it any less worthy, any less important.”
Nickname: Though Cross Academy is not a university, there are those that call him “the Professor” anyway.
Age: Visually appears to be in his early twenties. His actual age is unknown to any but his father—even he isn’t exactly sure what it is.
Gender: Male
Race: He professes to be human before some and a pure-blood before others, but he is in fact something not quite either. A very particularly-engineered Dhampir, if one wishes to think of it in such terms.
Role: Literature and Philosophy teacher at Cross Academy. Beyond that, Ivan’s secret weapon in the war against Lilith and her sympathizers.
Appearance
“It is never the strength of others that we fear, but our own weakness. The wise man makes his weakness his strength, and then there is nothing left to fear at all.”
Hair Color: Silver-blond
Eye Color: Violet
Skin Tone: Pale
Height: 6’1”
Weight: 167lbs
Physical Description: Like all members of the bloodline from which he was created, there is an otherworldly perfection to the alignment of Sergei’s features, but his is tempered by a warmth that only humans can truly possess. His hair is a peculiar shade that seems equal parts silver and gold, sun and moon, and indeed it seems more aureate in the daylight and argent at night, though he does hope that nobody observes him closely enough to tell. His eyes are an indicative violet color, mixed with a bit of blue and grey, such that closest to the pupil, they favor the purple, but fade from that to blue to grey as iris approaches sclera. This is very hard to pick out from a distance, however, and so they mostly seem indistinct in hue, and most people would probably guess them to be one of the three, again depending on lighting conditions.
He is of an efficient height; tall enough to carry considerable strength in his posture and draw attention when he needs to, but not so tall that it begins to make things difficult, or distinguishes him so much that he can never go unnoticed. His build is likewise: neither thin enough for comment nor of a bodybuilder’s construction, he reaches a lean, svelte medium and maintains it.
He is most often to be seen wearing a pair of round, rimless spectacles, which seem to lend him a certain sort of disarming, academic dignity, and indeed he looks to be rather the gentle type, one that his students would say seems hardly capable of hurting a fly. Curiously, he is often in turtle-neck sweaters or shirts, and when he is not, his neck appears to be bandaged. The configuration hides some prominent scarring, and indeed much of his body bears some form of mark or another, particularly his back. This is never shown, however, and he is most discreet about it whenever possible.
His clothing is well-maintained, usually sweaters, blazers, slacks, vests, and that sort of thing, further lending credence to his professorial appearance while downplaying the impressiveness of his physique. Sometimes, his long, silky hair is pulled into a ponytail as well. He favors dark colors, cutting a neat silhouette wherever he goes. His movements are elegant, his voice generally soft and pleasant, though the especially observant will often catch an edge of melancholy to it, as though something weighs heavily upon him.
Personal Details
”For someone like me, love is remaining as distant as possible, as untouchable as I can make myself. Nobody should be burdened with my affections, nor should they strive for them. I am unworthy of being loved.”
Potential Interest: TBA
Skills and Abilities: Sergei was designed to be the consummate slayer of vampires, and this was not accomplished without giving him is own vampiric qualities. His very nature is divided, between that which is human and that which is not, and his creator endeavored him to imbue him not with partialities, but with the full measure of each. What exactly his vampiric abilities are is a well-kept secret, and as of yet, none but his creator have seen them. On the more human side, he is adaptable, compassionate, and quite well-versed in the hunter’s arts. Notably, he does not seem to be harmed by items made of the one metal, as in fact he possesses a human soul, which grants him protection from it.
This duality comes with drawbacks, however: though he was designed to be able to do what the First Being did and create a seal for Lilith, he is actually incapable of this. Additionally, when activating his more vampiric abilities, he can at times lose control of himself, surrendering to the darkness within all of them. His nature is constantly at odds with itself, and he truly belongs in neither world. Though immune to vampire bites, he also cannot ever become human, meaning that these difficulties are his to bear forever.
Other: Sergei’s hobby is piano, and he’s good enough to be a professional. It was he who taught Ekaterina to play, actually.
Personality: Ivan’s creation struggles at a fundamental level with what he is. Created in equal parts from the blood of Lilith and the First Being, he could genetically be considered their child. This technically makes him a dhampir, though he is significantly different from others of his kind. His vampiric abilities do not appear to have suffered for the flaws in his blood, and oddly enough, it is his human qualities which have come out less than intended. His creator has since attributed this to the sheer strength of Lilith’s genetics. Indeed, he does not possess the First Being’s ability to create seals, though he does seem to have inherited a soul, if the imperviousness to One Metal is anything to go by.
All of this makes for a strange, shifting personality. When fully in control of himself, he does not appear to be anything other than a human, if a particularly good-looking one. His demeanor is kind, warm, and sincere, with inflections of humor here and there. While he can occasionally say or do something unexpected, it is usually if not always the good kind of surprising. To his students, he exhibits wisdom, intellect, and empathy, and it is well known that of all the teachers on staff, Sergei is unique. He seems to be able to differentiate genuine excuses from false ones with ease, and though he does not tolerate deception, he is incredibly understanding of legitimate issues, and fair. He is well known among the female student body (both day and night class) for his soft, genuine smiles, and has such a way with people that it seems earning his approval and avoiding his (gentle, but somehow incredibly crushing) disappointment are sufficient motivators for even the most troublesome students in his class.
When the glasses come off, however (literally as well as metaphorically), there is something very frightening about him. The lines of his face harden, and his eyes take on a steely glint that speaks of utter fearlessness and ruthless determination. This is but a shadow of his vampiric self, and perhaps that is for the best. When using his powers (which he hates to do), he is a vision of terror, and it is not difficult to guess that he was made from Lilith’s DNA. At times, the strength of her blood drives him to incredible violence and recklessness, a part of him that his human side hates as much as his more brutal instincts despise his otherwise innate softheartedness.
He dislikes himself, incredibly so, and to a certain extent, his creator for making him this way. He carries a large burden of guilt for many incidents in the past in which he lost control of his power, and generally tries to avoid open conflict for this reason.
Background
“From birth, I have known something that so many people struggle to understand: my purpose. Knowing it, I think that those who get to discover for themselves are luckier, no matter how much pain it causes them in the meantime. It is better not to know.”
History: Ivan Rasputinov is, among many other things, a scientist of no mean talent. He also considers himself the guardian of the future, and preserver of the line of the First Being, original defeater of Lilith. At some point in history, he lost track of the humans he so devotedly worked to protect, and in his desperation to restore them, he turned to genetic engineering, a technology he had discovered long before humans knew it was even possible.
From the precious blood of the First Being, and also from Lilith herself, he spliced together a new creature, something that he hoped would possess both her strength and the strength required to defeat her if ever she rose again. The result, though in some ways imperfect, was a male child, a dhampir that Ivan named Issac, aware that its well-being was already sacrificed for his own designs, as Issac was to be sacrificed to prove Abraham’s devotion. As the child grew, Ivan taught him everything that he should know of combat and destruction, tutoring him carefully in the strengths and limitations of his own body until he judged that the youth was ready to tap into the part of himself that was Lilith.
He judged incorrectly, and what happened over those years is not something that either ever speaks of. Eventually, with Ivan and a large team of other vampires and hunters working together, Issac was brought back under control, and reverted to his more humanlike sensibilities. The guilt, however, never left him.
He has since gained more control of himself, and though he has not proven to be exactly what Ivan was after, incapable of creating a seal, he is still what the elder Rasputinov refers to as his secret weapon, or perhaps in different terms, the ace up his sleeve. Very few people are aware of what Sergei actually is, incorrectly assuming him to be the son of Ivan by a human woman, something that would not be seen as all that unexpected of a human sympathizer like him. As an “ordinary” dhampir with no observed vampiric powers beyond the norm, he is readily passed over and dismissed by those who play the grand game of chess between the Lilith sympathizers and those who would see her dead for good.
This is exactly as Ivan intended it, naturally, and he sent his “son” to Cross Academy, placing him in the position of a teacher so that he could watch over all of those who were more obviously important to the grand game.