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 | | Subject: Melantha Jaral Thu May 31, 2012 11:40 pm | |
| • Melantha • Namine • Jaral •  Name: Melantha Namine JaralNickname: MelAge: 73 yearsWeight: 75 lbsHeight: 5’2”Eye color: Melantha has incomplete heterochromia – her irises are bright orange around the pupils, but the color shifts to a light blue closer to the whites.Hair color: Naturally, Mel’s hair is dark brown, but a strange side-effect of her power causes it to shift colors. She has learned to apply this more or less at will, though the hues tend to reflect her emotions when she is feeling one with particular intensity.Race: Vampire (4th generation suspected, actual lineage unknown), 1/4 elven before being turned.Residence: Wherever Iris takes herNationality: Ukrainian-AmericanAffiliation: Blood Rose ClanOccupation:None permanentFace Claim: Demi Lovato• all in the details • Appearance: Melantha is tall and lithe, a scant inch or two under six feet, and possesses the slender and refined bone structure of the elven race, though she is somewhat short and not quite thin enough to be one in truth. Her ears seem mainly human, though elongated just enough to show a touch of elven blood as well, marking her as half-blooded elf or perhaps less. Her skin is pale as any vampire’s, though her eyes and hair set her apart – the formed being a strange combination of orange and blue, while the hue of her hair is ever changing (though normally dark brown, for instance when she is calm or asleep). She has a fondness for jewelry, silver in particular, and tends to dress in silks or other comfortable fabrics of bright colors, unless hunting. The style of her attire varies greatly – left to her own devices she is nearly always seen in one type of dress or other, but she is willing to alter that if there is a job to be done.Personality: Melantha is a broken vampire. Having spent years in isolation because of the dangers her particular talents pose to anyone near her, she has very little concept of personal relationships, and almost no ability to see people as even normal vampires would. She does not in general appreciate the company of others, particularly of her own kind, and tends to react inappropriately to the majority of social interactions, since her only interactions for almost fifty years have been with her victims, or with clan vampires who tried to kill her for causing problems. In her moments of clarity, she is far from mindless, and can demonstrate aptitude with most basic technology or complex ideas, and she has an excellent predator’s mind, though many skills not related to hunting or feeding have atrophied considerably. For these reasons, she tends to see all living creatures as either threats or a source of food, with little gray area.
This has been tempered somewhat thanks to her relationship with a young vampire named Iris, who is the source of Mel’s only real bond and the only one she seems to hold no inclination for violence toward. Of course, this relationship is on the opposite end of Mel’s rather bipolar spectrum, as Mel’s attachment to Iris often crosses into obsession. She idolizes and loves the younger vampire in her way, and in modeling her own behavior after Iris’s has managed to at least put up a façade of civility, though this breaks down rapidly if she should be exposed to other people without Iris being present. Around Iris she is cheerful, affectionate, generally calm, almost but not quite polite – that is, she only attacks people when it would be appropriate, or Iris asks her to. Away from Iris she quickly degenerates into a mostly feral creature, mistrusting and vicious in some circumstances, shy and fearful in others, but always murderous if pushed.Abilities:As a vampire, Melantha has the typical enhancements to her strength, speed, agility and durability over a normal human. Her eyesight is exceptional even among her kind, and she has a slight edge over most vampires of similar age in her physical attributes. This comes at a tradeoff, however – she has almost zero ability to influence humans or other creatures thanks to her antisocial nature. Her regenerative capability is unusual as well – she can heal like most of her kind, but doing so seems to take far more out of her than normal, and dealing with wounds tends to cause her to lose herself in bloodlust very quickly.
Beyond her purely vampiric abilities however, Mel does have a considerable supernatural talent of her own, unique among her kind: Melantha is perhaps the most poisonous creature in the known world.
Mel produces this without conscious effort in response to stress, usually at a fairly low grade. Her pores secrete the toxin across her entire body, along with a chemical very similar to dimethyl sulfoxide, a carrier that allows these to be absorbed through the skin of those she touches. Most commonly, the toxin secreted from her skin behaves much like that produced by the foxglove plant, causing nausea, vomiting, confusion, visual and auditory hallucinations, and eventual cardiac arrest. The degree and duration of contact determines the severity of the symptoms, as does Melantha’s mental state – and her intent. She has learned over the years to modulate the effects of her toxins somewhat to produce the desired effects, with her favorites being the hallucinations and confusion – this is something of a crapshoot however, like any chemical introduced into the blood of a creature, the effects vary considerably based on any number of factors. She cannot control or suppress the effects completely – prolonged contact with her WILL prove debilitating, eventually. At the weakest, prolonged contact with her produces mild discomfort and a sense of vertigo not unlike alcohol intoxication. At their strongest, with her emotions and focus at their height, she can cause the death of most living creatures via neurotoxin in under an hour, with debilitating effects setting in within about ten minutes.
Even at its most potent, lethal doses of the toxin require sustained contact with her to be absorbed, though smaller doses can still be dangerous. A minor dose, producing discomfort or a sense of light intoxication can be absorbed in only a few seconds, while major doses can take upwards of a minute. Like any poison, this varies according to the size of the victim and their resistance to toxins. Thanks to its magical properties, despite their unnatural metabolism, vampires and other undead are affected by her neurotoxic effects – although the effects are slanted more heavily toward the hallucinatory in the initial stages, and it takes roughly three times as long to contract a lethal dose. Under extreme duress, Mel’s toxin can grow potent enough to produce a caustic effect much like an acid, allowing her to weaken some materials by touch – she cannot produce this at will, it is a last-ditch defensive mechanism, as she is not immune to the effect.
The final sources of her toxin are from her bite and her blood, both of which are more potent than her touch, though the effect is somewhat different. Life within her toxic body has worked a certain bizarre change on the naturally-occurring bacteria and other organisms within her body, as well as the virus that changed her itself, producing a cocktail of dangerous and aggressive microorganisms that feed on the chemicals she produces, which ordinarily serve to limit the concentration of these in her blood. Without these, her own poison would eventually kill her, but they have a far different effect in the bodies of other individuals. Released in an environment largely devoid of what they have come to depend on, the organisms begin viciously assaulting the new host, trying to obtain what they need to survive. The effect is much like any severe bacterial infection – without proper treatment, death may follow, depending on the health of the individual and the ability of their immune system to fight back long enough for the mutant organisms to die off – the majority of the bacteria can survive for less than a week outside Melantha’s bloodstream before dying.
Skills: While life alone has eroded most of her skills, Mel does possess a few abilities.
Stealth – Like most vampires, Mel has considerable talent for remaining hidden and silent. Her years avoiding every living thing she could, except to sneak into towns and commit murders to feed.
Fighting – Oddly enough, Mel’s feral method of combat is reasonably effective. She is slippery, always moving, difficult to hold or hit, and her surprising strength often works to her advantage. Her poison skin makes this even worse, since anyone who grapples with her unprotected is soon tainted by it.
Healing – Though rarely used, Melantha is in fact a talented nurse, skilled at binding and stitching wounds shut. Of course this is not something she can do herself, anymore. That would entail too much contact with the person she was trying to help, and almost certainly result in them growing much worse. She does retain a knowledge of medicines and remedies however, some technological, some herbal, or even Elvish.
Sewing – Partially thanks to her stitching training for her healer duties, Melantha is skilled with a needle. Since being dragged back to civilization by Iris, she had turned some of her downtime toward this skill, becoming a considerable talent at designing clothes, tapestries and the like.
Pianist – Encouraged by some of the others in the clan, Melantha has taken up the piano, though with limited success. She has flashes of brilliance with the instrument – but at least one destroyed piano can attest to her moments of failure, and her considerable frustration.
• the tale of a lifetime• History: Melantha never knew her father, only her mother, a human living in a fairly remote town near the front of the war, rarely touched by attacks thanks to its lack of strategic importance. As someone with elven blood from her grandfather, she was often an outcast among the other people of the town, but she did well enough in school, and was planning to go into medical school upon graduation. Before that time came, a military operation changed the strategic value of the town, but the elvish reprisal saw it change hands, and many of the humans were driven out. Melantha’s mother was killed by stray magic, and she nearly died herself, though she was rescued instead by an elven healer. The man was the first to discover Mel’s supernatural talent for healing, the reason she had never been sick or badly hurt, and helped her to nurture it into a true power. She could speed the healing of wounds just by her touch, and her blood had the power to do far more beyond even that.
Despite the loss of her mother, and the transition to a new society where she was even less accepted by most, Mel found those to be happy times. The elves who mistrusted her initially were nonetheless grateful for her aid in healing their sick and wounded, and she truly found a place of sorts, enough that she even began seeking her father. It was not to be, as a second attack turned her world upside down – this the work of a small vampire clan. The elves were killed, though Melantha never truly learned the reason why, and the leader of the clan took her for her own, thrilled at the prospect of such a quickly-healing blood doll, as well as the additional strength and healing her empowered blood could grant the lady. She was kept in that manner for nearly a year before other vampires, perhaps jealous, attacked her mistress – highly unsuccessfully, as it turned out. It was Melantha’s turn to be caught in the crossfire, though – she was mortally wounded, and lay dying in her lady’s arms. The vampire and girl had grown rather fond of one another’s company, and so wishing to salvage both that and her proverbial golden goose, the vampiress decided to turn Mel, draining her and allowing her to drink of her own blood to be transformed.
Sadly, the affair went very differently than planned.
As the virus changed Melantha’s body, it worked strangely on her power as well, corrupting her healing ability, almost inverting it. What had granted strength and health now became debilitating, lethal. It’s magic aspect grew stronger, and her aura reached out to the blood she had lost, altering what still lay in her mistress’s own bloodstream. Melantha’s blood changed abruptly, turning from a boon to one of the most lethal toxins imaginable. The vampire lady died in horrible agony while Melantha watched, her own body still changing and helpless to do anything about it. And so she was reborn, alone and terrified. She sought other people, other vampires, but all died within days of her arrival, sickened by her very touch, while the humans she was forced to feed upon often died screaming while her fangs were still in them, a far cry from the peaceful oblivion they should have been granted. Eventually she cracked, losing the last shreds of her sanity and fleeing deep into the wilds, where she remained for nearly fifty years. She passed into myth and story, a crazed vampire living alone, though neither hunter nor vampire found her and returned, though it is rumored that several vanished in her pursuit.
That might have gone on had she not been caught during a rare foray into civilization to obtain a fresh human to feed upon, where another vampire with the form of a young girl caught her. Melantha was horrified, caught between the urge to kill and to flee, when Iris made contact, even taking her hand, and yet suffered no ill effects. Melantha did not understand why, but finally finding someone her mere touch did not kill caused her to break down in tears, even passing out there on the ground. She awoke later in Iris’s clan… and soon became its newest and most likely least-trusted member. She has little care for the other members of the clan either – her only care or loyalty lies with Iris, the one person she can be something other than a plague to, and she will live whatever life her only friend takes her along for.
Notes:Melantha has an extreme phobia of being touched, though not without good reason. While walking through a crowd or among others, she will often take elaborate measures not to come within a foot of another creature, and she is horrified by the very idea of handshakes or anything like them. This is different if Iris convinces her to kill for a mission, of course, but deep inside she harbors an intense loathing for her own power, and seeing it work is always a great trial for her.Is this a Canon?: No, but requested. Is this your second character, and if so, who is your first?: Second – Kale
Last edited by Melantha Jaral on Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:12 pm; edited 4 times in total |
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