| “ | “I’ve come to believe that everyone deserves a third chance.” | ” |
| — Anastasia the Merciful Judge | ||
Anastasia is an 8th generation Nosferatu of Milwaukee. Anastasia wishes to revamp the court system of Milwaukee, which for the last decade has consisted of her, Decker, and another judge passing sentence on accused Kindred in a feudal manner. Decker reasons that this is the only way to handle errant Kindred, but Anastasia believes a more enlightened society benefits from Kindred being able to defend themselves, perform actions to earn their freedom, or have witnesses speak on their behalf. She believes in Decker’s laws completely and utterly but hopes the old Gangrel might loosen his grip.
Biography[]
| “ | I used to be very pretty. I was the most popular girl in school, with a gorgeous boyfriend and a hot new sports car. Then I had that little car accident, and you can see the results for yourself. My parents were killed in the wreck and I was left all alone, twisted and ruined. That’s when Parovich showed up to “help.” He was very ugly. I hated him. He stank and leered at me like a dirty old man. I was so pretty, so Pretty.
Then Kristian found out Parovich was working for some people called the Black Hand. Kristian said these people were very dangerous, kind of like the Mafia. He said we would have to run away or we would get Blood Bound I didn’t know what this meant, but Kristian said it was like being brain washed. He told me about some hiding places and promised to visit. I tried to hide with regular people, but I was too ugly. I used to be so pretty. I can’t go to school anymore and I can’t talk to anybody because I’m so ugly. Now I hide in empty cellars and sewer drains and hunt far blood. I really don’t like that very much. I often drink just a little bit fmm stray cats. I’ve collected quite a little zoo of them and they follow me around when I change homes. They’re the only friends I have to talk to except for Kristian. He visits me about once a week, and he always brings me something nice, like flowers or perfume. Did I tell you how pretty I used to be? |
” |
Mortal Days[]
Anastasia looks back on her breathing days with a sense of distant remove. She had nothing special going on, beyond being one of the most popular kids at school in the East Side of Milwaukee. She was a good-looking girl, had a steady boyfriend, and her parents had bought her a Nissan 300ZX to congratulate her on passing her test at the age of 16.
It was a fast car, a flashy car, and maybe a little more than a person her age was equipped to handle. Nonetheless, she drove it to and from school, impressed her peers (or made them jealous) whenever she turned into the parking lot, and routinely sped away at an all-too-dangerous speed not long after the ring of the school bell.
It was in Anastasia’s Nissan that she experienced her first collision. In a twist of fate, her boyfriend sat across from her, and the car she hit contained her parents. The crash was fatal for her mom and dad—her mother decapitated, her father cut in half.
For Anastasia, it was all a blur of black and red, screeching and screaming. When she came to, her boyfriend was pinned between his seat and the dashboard, murmuring that he needed help. She was covered in blood and stumbled from the car.
She couldn’t focus, and her memory flashed to the cause of the crash: someone had stepped out in front of her car as she sped up the long drive to her parents’ house, just as they were coming the other way.
Despite her boyfriend’s cries, she searched around for the person she worried might have been caught between the two vehicles. After finding nothing, she stumbled back to her car, only to find the man she’d spotted briefly leaning in through the passenger side window, sucking on her boyfriend’s neck.
Anastasia didn’t scream. She turned on her heel and ran toward her house. She was only 16, and whatever this hideous creature was, she wasn’t going to be able to harm it or scare it off.
Unfortunately for Anastasia, the creature caught up to her.
Kindred Nights[]
The monster who knocked Anastasia to the ground, dragged her across the gravel, and ripped out her throat was a Nosferatu named Parovich. He hadn’t intended on engineering a car crash, instead aiming to invade Anastasia’s home that evening. The actual outcome delighted him, and the resisting Anastasia amused him. He watched her bleed out for some time before feeding her a small amount of his vitae, setting her onto the bodies of her dead parents and dying boyfriend to sate her remaining hunger.
Anastasia’s existence as a childe of Parovich was terrible by any standard. He regularly cycled through new childer in his house on the Milwaukee outskirts, tormenting and teasing before hunting and murdering his offspring. Those he favored, usually just because they gave him more amusement than those he did not, he kept around for a few years. Anyone else was a vintage left to mature for a while before he devoured them. Anastasia was obliged to participate in Parovich’s hunts for a long time, unfamiliar with the rest of Kindred society and terrified of what might happen if the cops discovered her. Parovich convinced Anastasia they were looking for her, and told her the MPD were looking for her in connection to the three deaths, and so out of fear, she stuck to his side.
It took two years for her Blood brother Kristian to tell her a little of the vampires in wider Milwaukee. Fascinated, Anastasia asked for more and more information, resulting in snatches of story time whenever Parovich was absent. She learned of the Camarilla and the Anarchs from him. Further, Kristian informed Anastasia that some Kindred could moderate their hunger and hate, and the Black Hand were a group who exalted in such feelings. Parovich, he told her, was a secret member of that sect.
One night, Kristian and Anastasia fled Parovich’s haven, resulting in the Nosferatu elder, who also served as Primogen for his line in Milwaukee, enlisting coteries to quietly hunt his childer. Kristian told Anastasia it would be best for them to hide separately, but with no knowledge of the city beyond the neighborhood she once lived in and the school she once attended, her options were limited. She took to making a haven in a steam tunnel beneath Carmen High, her former school, and became a figure of children’s folklore. For company, she drew the neighborhood cats to her, and the story of “the Milwaukee catgirl” quickly spread.
Anastasia may have remained confined to her tiny district of the city forever, were it not for Parovich’s downfall. Word of his affiliation with the Black Hand spread, the elder succumbed to the Beast, and supposedly exists as a wight terrorizing the worst parts of Milwaukee still. Around the same time, Prince Decker clamped down on the liberties of all Milwaukee’s Kindred, and demanded each one present themselves, pledge their loyalty to him and the Camarilla, and spurn any thought of the Anarch Movement.
Anastasia learned of these changes through her cats, which had long become her spies, doped with vitae, and obediently she attended court for the first time, presenting herself to Prince Decker. She explained her ignorance of Camarilla customs, but likewise explained the horrors Parovich visited on her and his other childer. She told Decker she was only 16 when she was Embraced, but in the successive years had learned more about survival and remaining hidden than probably anyone else in the domain. She swore allegiance to him, providing he promised no excesses akin to Parovich’s behaviors would ever be repeated in Milwaukee. Decker accepted the Nosferatu as a Kindred of Milwaukee, but declared her the last permitted unsanctioned Embrace in the domain.
Since then, Anastasia’s role in Milwaukee has developed. She looks out for the young and the hopeless in the city, knowing how difficult it is to survive with a cruel or absent sire. She implements new rules most other Milwaukee Kindred abide by, including banning the feeding on and siring of children. Due perhaps to her candor, or maybe her perceived innocence, Decker looks to her on decisions regarding her clan. He’s gone on to appoint her one of his three domain judges, who decide all rulings regarding Decker’s strict laws, and those who break them.
None of this has truly hardened Anastasia. She’s still a 16-year-old in many ways, and while she’s prone to politicking, territoriality, and is still obsessed with how she might improve her mutilated appearance, she’s also possessed of a great capacity for compassion and open-mindedness. The longer she rules over the exiles, tortures, and executions of her fellow Kindred, the more she enjoys her role as “the merciful judge.” She now considers whether Golconda might be open to her, or if she might mellow Decker’s tyranny. Increasingly, Milwaukee’s Kindred look to her as a voice of reason in the Midwest police state domain.
After the disappearance of Parovich, his childer came out of hiding. Prince Decker tapped Anastasia and Arjun Shah to become Milwaukee's second and third court Judges alongside him. Anastasia’s received word that Parovich is still around in Milwaukee in some form or other, and he’s the one vampire for whom she has no mercy. She will gladly reward any vampire who renders him to ash, even if they act outside Decker’s laws.
Anastasia believes many Kindred stop growing and learning when they’re Embraced. Certainly, she feels this happened to her. She’s no teacher, but she’s a friendly ear and invites Kindred in the domain to spend time with her and tell her what’s on their mind. In exchange, she offers advice from the perspective of someone who existed in a state of constant fear for close to 20 years.
Appearence[]
Anastasia still looks young despite her disfigurement, but that’s where the kind words end. Her face is a mass of scar tissue and open wounds, and though few see it, her torso is full of tattered holes. Her lean body bears a distinctly gray hue. She always wears a hat, usually a cap or beanie, to cover a weeping crack in her skull.
Anastasia still bears her teenage voice, which can light up a room with vitality or become a petulant whine when she’s unhappy. She alternates between bounding enthusiasm and deep introspection.
“Anastasia” isn’t her real name, and she’s never used her birth name since Parovich ordered her to call herself “Anastasia.” She has no paperwork or formal false identity, with Horsen House still in the name Parovich adopted among the kine.
Sheet[]
Image: Anastasia still looks young despite her initial disfigurement from the accident and the further disfigure ment of becoming a Nosferatu. She still wears an old dress she had when she was in high school; a frilly, bright-colored outfit which has now faded to a dingy brown.
Roleplaying Hints: Act bright and happy despite your position. Be oblivious to your dirty surroundings and ask the most attractive male characters if they like your hair (most of which is gone). Every now and then, realize what has happened to you and talk like you do in the section above.
Haven: A steam tunnel under her old school. The room is used to house me equipment for the electric company and so is fairly dry. She sleeps in a corner furthest away from the hissing electrical equipment.
Influence: None except what little influence she has with Kristian.
Backgrounds Sheet[]
East Side Children
(Contacts 3)
Due to her reputation as a folk legend, Anastasia is effective at terrorizing children and getting them to spy for her, provide information to her, and give her access to their parents’ homes. It escapes her that when they assist in a home invasion, she’s carrying out a practice of which Parovich was exceptionally fond.
Mark Decker
(Mawla 4)
Decker isn’t perfect, but he’s right. That’s Anastasia’s view. She’s come to believe that without a firm governor, vampires are prone to become devils in human skin, and it’s Decker’s grip on Milwaukee that now keeps it from such bloodshed. She may be kind and merciful, but she’s fiercely dedicated to the Prince, acting as a disciple in his police state cult.
Milwaukee’s Stray Cats
(Retainer 1)
By no means an organized group, Anastasia has a strong connection to the stray cats of Milwaukee, providing them with tins of tuna and kibble when she’s not letting them lick a little vitae from her fingers. She has a strong rapport with felines throughout the city.
Trivia[]
- Some vampires gossip that for all her pretense as a judge, Anastasia’s favor can be bought with something as simple as a bouquet of flowers or a bottle of perfume. She’s obsessed with beauty.
- Anastasia came from a wealthy family, but the only places she traveled when alive were in the Midwest. Since entering undeath, she’s been confined to Milwaukee. She wants to see the world and would assist anyone who enabled this.
- Tales of a Nosferatu bogeyman are rife throughout Milwaukee, and given the few members of that clan in the domain, many eyes turn to Anastasia. How seriously did Parovich screw her up?
- Anastasia will never forget that Kristian got her out from under Parovich’s heel. However, she also can’t forget the number of other Nosferatu killed during Parovich’s extended torture of his clanmates, nor how Kristian left her to fend for herself and only met her again after Parovich fell from grace.
- There is nobody Anastasia hates more than Parovich, and for good reason. Even the mention of his name puts her close to a state of frenzy.
- Anastasia found peace with Parovich’s decline and is now on the way to finding grace—and maybe a return to mortality.
Gallery[]
References[]
- VTM: Milwaukee by Night, p. 44-45
- VTM: Let the Streets Run Red, p. 87
- VTM: Children of the Blood, p. 36-39