Post by Lou on Dec 21, 2009 11:23:20 GMT -7
† Veronica - Marie - Thompson †
†Lou†
[/center]† General Information †
Full Name: Veronica Marie Thompson
Nicknames: Lou
Gender: Female
Race: Vampire
Age: 176
Age they appear: Late Thirties
Orientation: Heterosexual
Health Problems: None
† Personality †
Basic Personality:
Lou lives on her feet, she's road worn and weary...smart and devious. The whole of her new life has been lived thinking one-step ahead of everyone else. Her wit is sharp as her tough, while not overly book learned she's terribly streetsmart. Her strength lies in her speed of thought...it takes a lot to catch her off guard. She's found out that she's a hero in her own story and has decided to give the people what they want. A sharp and sassy heroine. A lot of her new life has been lived screwing others before being screwed in return. But now she has the power to make people hurt. So now it's almost screw over the other guy until he bleeds. It's her motto and she's good at it. Lou has an extreme hatred of self-righteous indignation...any holier than thou art person in her presence runs the risk of having a fool made of themselves, as that is usually the way she deals with such a person. Finding some small bit of Leigh way-way and then embarrassing the hell out of them. The problem with this sort of mockery is that, Lou has no scope on whether or not a person can beat the crap out of her. Though when she's feeling slightly less sporting she finds herself a bit less patient with foolish individuals. And can often call forth a vendetta that leads a person into tatters, leaving them with precious little to their name.
She's independent and self-reliant. Skilled at blending into any situation. She has, as a studied con-artist been able to read behavior and mannerisms of everyone she has come in contact with. Only so she can pass herself off as someone else later. She can preen and change her behavior and appearance so much that she can't even recognize herself sometimes. A good knack for a former card hall vamp who needed to be someone else on occasion to not get shot. But appearance is only half the facade, there's a grace about Lou that is charming and somewhat greasy but utterly trustworthy in the right situations. That's not because she's a good person. She's a con woman. Capable of reading into and playing into people's desires and beliefs but all for her gain. She knows how to say what everyone wants to hear through subtle statements and vague wording. When she had been younger and still had her looks about her she was quite the card table vixen and the good luck lady...only long enough to get what she wanted before the fellow could. But those days are long past...and now Lou has learned the time honored art of being a plain old swindler. Though she can't always manipulate a person or even figure out what the other person wants to hear, heck...some people just aren't the type to give into their wants. It's on those nights that Lou considers convincing a person NOT to kill her is the greatest victory of all.
Something about Lou lends itself to her being a good leader, either by merit of her charm or because she can be so dang bossy. Either ways she can lead the people who follow her into the crime world. She's fair in her requests most of the time. Though woe be the foolish fellow who questions her...as they're usually the one put out on the line. She is usually stern and confident to those she's leading. However she is also prone to violent mood swings and acts of cruelty. Though these days she has been loping about on her lonesome she still can show off an air of alpha attitude and self importance.
Likes:
† Hard Liquor
† Harder Drugs
† Being better than you
† Shepard's Pie
† Fast cars
† Cigarettes
† New York
† Gambling
Hates:
† The Ocean
† Pennies
† The majority of England and its peoples
† Bobbies [Cops]
† Too many questions
Talents:
† Can speak Pikey Dialect and Cockney rhyming slang
† Is a master strategist
† A shrewd business woman
† Not to mention a snappy dresser
† Could sell an icebox to an Eskimo
† Is a gifted gambler, and quite the card counter.
Habits:
† Peering over her sunglasses
† Crossing her arms
† Laughing venomously
† Being utterly too bizarre to read
† Sizing people up like meat when she's talking to them
Secrets:
† Has two children who she had through a buisness associate a decade or two ago, she dumped them with their father after birth. She has no idea of their whereabouts, and doesn't care.
† Appearance †
Skin Color: Pale white
Hair Color: Straw Blond
Eye Color: Black
Build: Average
Piercings/Scars/Tattoos: A nautical star on her right arm (For former heroin use), Pierced ears, several razor wire scars on her forearms.
Appearance:
Lou is a respectfully tall woman, standing at about 5'8" and her form curvey, like a proper woman at least. But there's more to it than that. Her intense stare, the sultry leer of a predatory femme fatale. She looks years younger than her middle aged years, the original components are still in place, the pointed and arched nose, the thin brows and the high cheek bones. But now she's pale beyond what should be normal even for a former native of the British Isles, she has taken a liking to accenting her complexion with warmer tones of brown. Natural colors, nothing too caustic, unless times call for it. Her lips are often rouged and lifted at the edges in a coy little smirk. Her eyes are a dark blue, almost black if not inspected on first glance, tastefully laced with traces of eyeliner and shadow. Her blond hair, is still the fine golden color it once had been, but now it's grown out, and pulled daintily back and out of her face in a wrap. Curling at the ends, with the occasional odd strand dipping into her face.
While on occasion she wears khakis and Hawaiian shirts (prefered), she wears them differently, buttoned lower, worn tighter, rolled up more. Though now back in the swing of things it could surprise someone how many costume changes the woman can make. She's just as comfortable in jeans and a tee-shirt as she would be a cocktail dress or a business suit. She epitomizes the mark of the chameleon and the urban predator. Changing her image to fit in better with those around her and what she needs to do. She'll do it, probably not in perfect vogue, but she can fit in without too much concentration and look good if she puts forth the effort.
† History †
History:
Lou is a child of the industrial slum lands of Derby (Derbyshire), England. So near Wales, that most of the children spoke the pigeon of the common folk of the area. She started her life known as Veronica Thompson, the middle child, and the only girl. Her life was surprisingly normal for a young woman constantly viewing family's morally decrepit situation. Her father, though technically unemployed managed to bring money home by being a debt collector for the local loan shark. Of course most of his ability to persuade people to pay was quite lethal. Her mother, who at one time had been the daughter of a falling old money family, had been fond of 'slumming it' in her youth had found herself pregnant and disowned. She had very little contact with her family, who had been shamed by her choice to keep her first child, then proceed to have two others after it. Though the ultimatum was always, ditch the dead beat. Then she and her children would be welcomed back. However she always declined, much in love with her husband and hoping to heal him of his poor choices. She had always been the very conscious of the man that she loved.
Veronica looked upon her father's actions with a startling understanding and somewhat a bit of awe but not without a spoonful of disgust. As much as she loved her father and ignored his rough hewn ways she could never feel that he was anything more than a grunt, though his strength was great, he still took orders from the shark. Making him nothing more than a tool in her eyes. And privately she reserved herself thinking that the role of the loan shark...the thief and con-man was that of power. She remembered that long after her father was arrested for assault and murder. Which he never survived after getting into the lock. Veronica, her mother and two older brothers made haste for London to live with her grandmother and aunt, who had offered to take them in now that Lou's father had been taken out of the picture. Getting them out of the slum in hopes of somehow deprogramming the children to be civilized human beings.
It was there with great pressure from her extended family that Veronica was almost reformed into a perfect and shining example of domestic goddess. As many daughters born in the 50s and 60s were trained to be, just to bleed out the slums of Derby out of her system (her first language is cockney after all). It was hardwired into the only girl in the family, it was obvious that something drastic had to be done. After years of finishing school, she accepted her lot in life to be eventually a standard housewife, though her stubborn spirit hardly wanted to fit into the mold. She went through her schooling without a lot of high marks or anything impressive. She didn't really go on to a specialty school as many of her peers did, though she had tried to become an accountants secretary...which she had done well with, but had easily been shooed away from by her mother. Her lot in life was certainly set, she was to become a homemaker as her mother and her mother had been before. While her brothers became rogue scholars and military officers, they took on adventures that a younger Veronica would've loved, maybe even killed, to take.
Instead Veronica married her first sweetheart and had a lack luster relationship that went sour very quickly. In part due to Veronica's strong will and ability to nag relentlessly. But the clincher was that she never managed to bear him any children (or rather, she managed to assure she never had his children), she was treated by her family as if she were a leper because she could not be a functional member of society...though she was highly rebellious at her time, it hurt her that she could not fit in with the status quo, and it wasn't long before she hated it more than anything more in her life. As it was not long before her husband became rather short with her, and vocally abusive. And not long after that physically. She had become a prisoner of the family she had once been told to trust.
While being berated by both her family and husband something in young Veronica snapped. She had become as low as she could go, and in rebound she became increasingly cocky...reckless, and curious at anything out of her social norm. A woman with nothing left to live for. She was more than dangerous. She was half mad. And hungry for power that she did not yet have in the situation that she was in.
Her memory kept tagging back to the loan shark's power...a evil and unsavory power, yes. But power none the less. And since she had lost or never had the power to create life, she might as well have the ability to destroy it. It was when she said this out loud at Sunday supper to her mother that she nearly got herself committed. But she quickly put the charm on and explained that it was only a joke...but the bruise she got later that night only made her dwell on it. And the longer she thought about it, the more she liked the concept of power. She started conversing with the wrong sorts of people when she could. Wandering about the pubs, and byways like a very out of place observer. Picking up on the mannerisms and behaviors of the people in the slums. Taking a sudden liking of their simple yet terrible ways.
She had always had a skill of being able to read people...and she always liked gambling...and while lying a bit she convinced her husband that she was actually quilting with the girls when she was all but robbing money from street folk and other shadeys. Until she had saved up enough of her own money, as a very crafty card shark. A very avid femme fatale and a nasty con-woman. A veritable vamp if you will. She could trick her way into people's pocket books and still have the skill and charm to make them like her after the fact. She was good enough to get her wherever she wanted, to shack herself up with enough food or shoddy inn rooms to make herself independent. With that she disappeared from the old household. And starting her life of crime, skipping her old name with another to make it harder for her family to track her.
She started picking up shadeys that needed some form of backing. Usually younger gutter snaps whom she cared for like the children she never had, in return they helped her out with her skills. Making her a better lie smith, a lock cracker, gambler etc..etc...her work is unobtrusive, subtle...a bit of con work here and there, some illegal gambling/fighting robbing...things that are harder to pin down by Scotland yard. But that didn't mean Lou was not in any trouble. Her notoriety was renown by other high-class lowlifes in the city (Though it took years to achieve, nearly 20...) many of which were screwed over by the hands of Lou and her band of thieves. The heat was on her...and she wasn't long for this world if she stayed on the isle. The Bobbies and the crooks had her number...(Not to mention getting roughed up by a band of blighters nearly made her a statistic. She still hates salt water to this day) so she had to make herself scarce and lay low. Besides, she had all but tapped the possibilities in the UK...it was time for her too move on.
She had made herself the world traveler, something that she had always wanted to do. For a few years, wandering Europe like a hungry ghost. Doing the same song and dance through out the coastal areas. Only this time making it less and less obvious that she was doing anything that would raise a fuss. Greece, Italy, Spain...even up into France, Switzerland and Germany. Seeing the sights, and making connections as she went. Freaks, crooks, bookies, salesmen, and back alley lawyers. She didn't mind that she wasn't the boss for the while being. She took some time out to smuggle drugs...about country lines. Until the cartel became to hot to handle. By that time she was well on her way to leave anyways. Too much old world charm. No pizazz. Lou had decided that perhaps a trip over the pond would be beneficial to her cause. That trip was the hardest in her life...as her fear of the ocean long made the voyage more than stressful. Honestly it took years for her to get over the drug addiction she gained trying to level her nerves.
Anyways, she had always had a certain love for American culture...especially the Gonzo mannerisms that plagued 70s..so leaving her companions back in the adder pit, Lou started a thread of untraceable robberies down the west coast of the states (mostly through where's the mayo? fighting rings and dice which no one would admit were robbed). She had spent a good time in New Orleans. If only to mess with the existing gambling circles and had taken joyful odds to turn the whole establishment on it's fool head. She stayed long enough to shake the cages...All of these good old boy rich WASPs which threw a fortune down for a night of fun, her hatred of tradition and status quo made her an avid annoyance, one without a touch of guilt. But she didn't stay long, with pocket full of favors and ill-gotten booty the clever Lou took off in the night, before anything could be said or done about her. She had made many hits among Reno, Atlantic City, and the edge of Las Vegas...making sure to hit up the gambling rings about the areas. She was a scourge. Who was getting too big for her britches. And too published to survive any longer. She became a media disaster...and before she collapsed in her own fame the woman took to underground. Going to pasture so to speak. She was nearly killed by boredom and destructive drinking...and it wasn't long before her good looks left her. Leaving her a shell of the great creature she once was.
It was a fluke that she ever ended up in California at all she had mentioned off hand at a bar in Nevada that she was looking for some good criminals for a band of thieves. Her patience was long since faded into obscurity... as she longed for the glory days of her youth. Though she stayed in LA for the most part, she often wandered looking for more people to work with her. However her nose for trouble got her deeper and darker than she had ever managed to wade in before. And soon she was well over her head. Making enemies with many more skills than a tricky tongue. It wasn't long that the criminal predator was prey. And her loosely formed team turned her in at a drop of a hat and the first sign of trouble. After a bank heist gone awry, a shoot out and a fatal gun wound...Lou found herself going in that blaze of glory that she had always hoped would happen. An Epiphany instead of a whimper.
Until a few nights later she woke up in the morgue.
It was disorienting at first, but after the mortician pulled her out of her meat locker things seemed more definite as she ripped the man's neck apart and supped upon his blood. It seemed...to make sense. At last she was part of something. And she liked it. Even if she seemed a little empty inside, but instead of acknowledging what should have been the lack of her soul...she read it instead as a sign of freedom. No longer weighed down by her emotional desires. She became the slick vamp she had been in her youth. A silver tongued harpy enthused by the vitality and strength that came with her rebirth. Her patterns of dress changed first, noticeably, changing to the many needs that the woman would have, trying to make sure that she stayed dead to the common populace.
Over the centuries, Lou has made a name for herself, working underground in many criminal circles, eventually even coming back to her motherland, England, after all, one has to get back to her roots from time to time.
Mother/Father: Deceased
Siblings: Deceased
Offspring: Willem Warrender [Son], Anne Warrender [Daughter]
† Let's talk about you †
Name: Squeeji
Other Characters: Yzge'ek and Malorie Cohen
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