Sylvie Marina Verlaine

Basic Information.

• Gender: Female
• Race: Human
• Height: 5'7" 
• Age: 24
• Hair: Brown
• Eyes: Hazel
• Profession: "Recycler"
• Title: Lady Verlaine, Keeper of the Dead, Justice and Judge of the House Court
• Birthday: December 12th
• Word: Dour.
• Hyposexual (asexual).

Characteristics.

• She keeps her hair at shoulder-length and wears, almost exclusively, clothes that wouldn't have looked out of place on a man during the Victorian period. Her usual attire is black pants, a black satin vest, a crisp white button shirt, knee-high black boots and at times a knife strapped to her right leg. All of her clothes bear her favorite signature, buckles, usually just for decorative reasons. She wears a ring on her left hand, gold with the family 'V' crest on it. Marking her experience with the portal accident is a deep scar that runs down from her left eye.
• Her family's butler, Addetto, resembles a person who is very close to a hunched-over, moving corpse, or a deformed organic cello. He has no identifying marks—no eyes, which are stitches in the forms of x’s, no hair—but is characterized by his yellowish, disgusting skin, appearing fat; Addetto is around 5’7”. He is extremely unnerving to others because of his very fast, rapid movements, and of the clicking and squealing noises that he makes. He tends to jerk around while stationary, and wave his stumpy arms madly. When provoked this monster can spit out a spray of yellow acid, which, while it doesn’t do permanent damage, hurts very badly.
• As the Head of her House, Verlaine has a vast array of Ley gifts and she can do all of them powerfully, including creation of undead, controlling other peoples' minds (and reading them), talking to the dead, and she has her father's knack for portal magic. Unlike her father, however, she does need to eat.
• Multilingual, with at least a rudimentary understanding of: English, German, French, Latin, Czechoslavakian and Spanish. Often speaks Czechoslavakian when she doesn't want to be understood, for swearing or for disparaging remarks of people in the room still.
• She gets along well with old family friend (and draugr) Irenmund Cotter. Unlike the majority of the ley council, she isn't scared of him or his kind.

Family.

• Gregoire Verlaine (father)   [deceased]
• Charlotte Verlaine (mother; previously Charlotte Brant)    [deceased]
• Thierry Verlaine (brother)
• Andrexa Brant (aunt)

History.

Born to doting parents, at least for a few years, Sylvie's ley power manifested very early -- at four years old. Owing to her historical family, most considered that she would come out of schooling and do great and (perhaps) mysterious things, but Verlaine kept to the mysterious part. She rarely, if ever, left the house as a girl. When she was nine, her father was performing a portal experiment on the third floor of the Verlaine Manor, and she was assisting him though her mother had forbidden her involvement. Her father got more than he bargained for when a host of creatures came out of the portal from this connected for, maiming him and scratching up Verlaine until he crawled over to the portal and shut it down. While bleeding to death, he banished these creatures from his house into the woods outside (Verlaine would later round them up and lock them into the third floor, because of deaths in surrounding villages). These creatures were the Sunless: Joss, Vincent, Griswald.

This experience scarred her permanently, though it did not slow her appetite for magic. When she was twelve, she and her mother were in a nearby village when a number of Normals surrounded them, because of suspected "witchcraft." (This had been a rumor started by the Marwan family, out of spite.) Verlaine got to a pub in time, one friendly to her kind that sheltered her, but her mother was beaten to death in front of her eyes.

After this, she did very little outside. A friend of the family, Constance Fjell, from Norway, came to stay at Verlaine Manor because of its proximity to the school where the ley families' children were taught. Though the two girls did bond to some extent, a part of Verlaine's heart would always be frozen because of what had happened. Her older brother did what she would do later -- he took to drinking -- and was rarely seen; she got used to him not being around, and found it strange when he was.

Personality.

Naturally secretive, a dry sense of humor, quiet. Her attitude can seem a bit condescending at times, but this is because she's used to working with the mindless undead, who would of course have no real opinions on the matter; she doesn't mean to be unkind at all (though if she were accused of it, she likely would say that she wouldn't mean it one way or the other). Debates with her are a complete waste of time, as she prefers to be neutral on all subjects. She can be very skitterish and nervous when dealing with the living, who aren't as predictable as the creatures she's used to. Inside all of the numerous walls, however, there lies a core of rage from witnessing what she has throughout her life.

Likes/dislikes.

She adores the quiet, and reading books or thinking in that quiet. She has a similar fondness for moths, the feel of old parchment, puzzles, moss, and candles. On the other hand, she hates rash behavior, and shies away from being in direct sunlight, being that she spends most of her time in the musty bowels of the Verlaine home.

Fears.

She maintains a small fear concerning the Sunless -- Joss, the most dangerous and wild one, in particular.

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