Information

Jan. 1st, 2012 11:17 pm
ladykingair: (smug)
[personal profile] ladykingair
Player Info
Name: Gail
OOC Journal: cacopheny
Over 18? Yes
Email/IM/Plurk: email cacopheny@gmail.com

Character Info
Name:
Sidhaeg Maccon, Lady Kingair
Canon:
Parasol Protectorate
Age:
42
Canon/AU/CR AU:
Canon
Reference:
Soulless wiki page


History:
Sidhaeg Maccon grew up in Kingair Castle in the highlands of Scotland in the mid 1800s, under the guidance of her great-great-great-grandfather Conall Maccon, a werewolf of nearly two hundred years of age. She was sent away at thirteen to a “finishing school” that handled both the social graces and, apparently, the study of science, history, espionage, and assassination. It suited her better than a normal finishing school might have, even if she never did pick up the “proper” way to hold a teacup.

Graduating the school at sixteen, Sidhaeg went home, bringing along a werewolf-soldier she’d fallen in love with along the way, planning to introduce him to the pack and post the banns once she had their approval. What she found instead was a pack without an Alpha or a Beta: her great-great-great-grandfather abandoned them after killing his second-in-command for the pack’s betrayal, an attempt to kill the English queen using poison, of all things. Sidhaeg took over, set up her husband Niall as Alpha to back up her own control of them, and started pestering her still-living ancestor to change her. He refused, as the bite was even more dangerous for woman than for men, and continued to refuse every letter she sent.

They got along well enough, anyhow, even though Niall had no Anubis form and, thus, could not bite to create any more werewolves. When he was killed twenty-five years later while the pack was off on a mission for the military, however, something had to be done. It just so happened that on their way home from that mess, they picked up a mummy among some artifacts from Egypt that caused a “plague” of humanization among them. Conall Maccon, now ensconced in London, and his wife came to investigate and destroy the mummy and its effects, and in return for aid, finally bit Sidhaeg. Remarkably, she survived, with personality and power of an Alpha intact.

She settled into her new role and sent her Beta, Dubh, off to Egypt to investigate the mummy issue. When he was killed in his somewhat belated attempt to return, the London pack was brought in again to help investigate. Over the course of that investigation, Sidhaeg learned the truth about Lord Maccon’s abandonment of the pack: it was orchestrated by the London pack’s Beta, Randolph Lyall, in order to steal him for the London pack, to do away with an abusive Alpha there. Her first instinct was to kill him, though in the end, after fights both physical and verbal, she merely took him for her own pack for a time, instead. They were, after all, in need of a good Beta.

Canon Point:
After the events of Timeless

World Information:
The Earth of Sidhaeg Maccon's understanding is one in which the immortal and the mortal live side by side. Before the British Isles ever had a king, there were vampire hives along the Thames. Before Rome ever had a Caesar, it told tales about its founders being raised by werewolves. The highland bogs that held preserved remains of the dead sheltered their ghosts, who went slowly mad and disintegrated into the fairy lights of the swamps. Preternaturals-- soul-suckers and curse-breakers, depending on who you asked, those who negated the power of the supernatural-- hunted them and exorcised them all alike.

Some societies venerated one or another of the supernatural races-- the Roman empire rested on the backs of vampires, and Egypt was run by the werewolves for many generations-- or scorned them all as products of evil-- Italy in particular founded the Templars just to hunt down the supernatural and their allies. Some few accepted them all into polite society, like England and Scotland, where Sidhaeg lives.

It did not happen all at once, of course. During the Dark Ages, the supernatural lived in hiding, preying on humanity because they didn't have any other choice and few friends among daylight folk. The Renaissance, rather than just an age of educational enlightenment, was also an age of supernatural enlightenment, where the immortals of the world became as much a subject of scientific study as mortals. Their connection to aetheric particles and light waves is still not entirely understood, though there are a number of theories, trying to explain the several permutations of supernatural and who can be turned and who cannot.

The turning process is, after all, very dangerous and not at all certain. Only werewolf Alphas and vampire queens can bite to turn, and the process technically kills the applicant (or victim). If one has excess soul-- or the right kind of aetheric connection to ambient energy, depending on what theory one goes by-- the bitten one comes back to life as a werewolf or vampire. Most who attempt the change, however, die in the attempt, as there is no way to tell ahead of time who has the right qualifications, and such qualifications are very rare. Those with that same qualification who die of non-supernatural causes come back as ghosts. Werewolves and vampires are ageless and immortal, unless killed, but ghosts last only as long as their bodies can be preserved-- and vampires subsist on blood and are practically dead during the day, unable to stand the touch of sunlight, while werewolves go mad on the night of the full moon and lose their shifting ability during the daytime. All forms of supernatural have their downsides.

In England, things are perhaps the best of the Western countries for supernaturals. The Puritans left the country due to the king's mandate to integrate the supernatural into society, and both government and fashion started following supernatural trends. On the continent and in Italy particularly supernaturals are outlawed and hunted. Usually the stronger the Christian religious affiliation of the government, the more hostile to immortals. When they are not considered undead and merely dangerous for having to prey on humans, they are considered to have sold their souls for the bite and thus are pure evil. In England, however, they are regulated and registered just as any other important member of society, have their own dedicated branch of government known as the Bureau of Unnatural Registry (BUR), and are even considered something like a national treasure, being a fount of experience and knowledge spanning sometimes thousands of years. Many werewolves and vampires have high positions in the aristocracy, and while vampires have a controlling interest in the East India Trading Company, the werewolves have their place in the military. The English queen even has a small, private council of supernaturals: the dewan (werewolf advisor), the potentate (vampire advisor), and the muhjah (preternatural advisor).

Much of Europe's feudal and nobility structure in this version of Earth comes from werewolf pack and vampire hive dynamics. Vampires are tethered to their territory and follow their queen's rules, protecting her from harm and doing research and making money according to her preferences. Werewolves are tethered instead to their pack, with stricter rank orders than a true wolf pack: Alphas lead and turn new werewolves, Betas maintain order and protect the pack, and Gammas challenge their leaders and provide information, with the rest arrayed below that by age, strength, and cunning. Very few hives and packs are larger than a dozen members-- most are much smaller-- and new additions to the hive and pack are treasured, celebrated, and announced to the world as a successful metamorphosis.

Those aiming to petition for immortality, or just offer their talents in return for patronage and visibility in the upper set, are called drones (under vampires) and clavigers (under werewolves). Drones care for, gather information for, and protect their vampire masters during their daytime sleep. Clavigers serve the werewolves and help keep them caged during the full moon, armed with silver knives and silver mesh nets for capturing the powerful wolves should they escape.

The technology of the Victorian world is a bit skewed from that of a normal Earth, slightly more advanced and slightly more towards focused on steam as an energy source. There are also odd inventions such as dirigibles, which are zeppelin-like floating barges used for transport and pleasure cruises, and aethographers, distance communication devices the size of a pair of small rooms that use crystalline valves to transmit data wirelessly. These are both new inventions, but swiftly growing in popularity.

Personality:
The first description of Sidheag Maccon in her canon is as ”the kind of woman who took her tea black, smoked cigars after midnight, played a mean game of cribbage, and kept a bevy of repulsive little dogs”-- and for the time, that was practically the height of mannishness. The fact that she wields a rifle with consummate skill, and aims without shame it at trespassers and hated family members, doesn’t hurt, either. She is a gruff, no-nonsense woman with a generally crass and unflinching sense of humor, a powerful sense of responsibility for those she considers under her protection, and the habit of expecting her orders to be obeyed.

The flip side of that, of course, is that Sidheag is both stubborn and proud, with a fierceness to her protectiveness and a marked determination to do things on her own without the help of others-- others besides pack and clavigers, anyhow. She can and will order them to do what is necessary, and she has, by necessity, learned how to delegate. Sort of. She is still always ready to take trouble into her own hands, such as insisting on personal investigations into the God-Breaker Plague and its temporary resurgence in Scotland, and the immediate need to look into her Beta’s death, not trusting the authorities in London to handle it properly. Generally, she doesn’t even tell anyone else when she decides to take over things, she just does them, so that no one can tell her to stop or tell her to change her methods. Sidheag wants to deal with things how she sees fit, not how others might want to handle it.

How she sees fit tends to lean towards “with violence”, unfortunately, especially since her turning into a werewolf. Upon finding betrayal in an acquaintance that had, twenty years ago, threatened her pack, her first impulse was to track him down and tear his throat out. With her teeth. She had the same impulse upon discovering the murderer of her pack Beta, to exact swift and bloody revenge. Some of this may just be her youth as a werewolf-- it has only been two years since her metamorphosis, after all-- but some of it has always been a part of her personality. Leading a pack of immortal men who happen to turn into wolves at will has required her to learn their ways, and often adopt them herself.

In fact, much of Sidheag’s hardness comes from the circumstances of her late adolescence and adulthood. She grew up in a castle in the highlands of Scotland, living with a werewolf pack under the leadership of her great-great-great-grandfather, Conall Maccon. If that wasn’t enough to leave her a little rough around the edges, while she was away at “finishing school”, a plot hatched in London while she was away at school rent the pack from its Alpha, her undead ancestor, and left it leaderless. She returned with a new werewolf paramour to find the pack about to fall apart, and with her own strength of will and the help of her husband managed to pull it back together.

Her husband, a soldier-werewolf named Niall, took the Alpha position only for her sake, to give her the legitimacy and brawn to back up her control of the pack. She was a natural leader and was Alpha to werewolves decades older than she was-- even hundreds of years old-- but her Gramps, as she mockingly calls him, refused for decades to give her the bite. After all, she was his last living relative, and metamorphosis for women is much, much more dangerous than for men-- and even for men, it is more likely to end in death than not. Heedless of the danger, she sent him a letter regularly, every year, to try and convince him. Her pack needed an Alpha in truth, not just in name, and she assumed she had to be it. His refusal infuriated her, and she continues to hold the grudge even after being turned: really, she will hold a grudge until doomsday and beyond, and will frequently remind people of their failings long after the situation has been rectified.

In the end, Sidheag led the pack for twenty years through strength of will and charisma alone, building up authority from age sixteen with a group of werewolves who had known her as an infant. She’s learned strength and control, and how to growl out an order and have it obeyed, at least by those whose she’s won loyalty from, but it’s come at the price of her understanding of subtlety. Though she carries the title of “Lady” and wears (admittedly out-moded and plain) lace and velvet gowns, all the “finishing” she learned in school-- rather more of the intellectual, infiltration, and political variety than the “marriageable woman” variety, anyway-- has long since been abandoned and forgotten. She has no idea how to be delicate or indirect anymore, and really doesn’t see much point to being so.

When, after the death of her husband and the Alpha-in-name overseas and a rather harrowing event not long after with a mummy and a French maid that rendered the whole werewolf pack mortal for several long months, Lord Maccon finally gave her the bite, it was almost anticlimactic that she survived and wound up the Alpha in truth that she always expected. She has led her pack for two years, and is impatiently awaiting manifesting Anubis form so she can start acting as Alpha in all ways, not just in keeping her pack under control.

Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitations:
# Shapeshifting: Besides the mortal human shape she was born with, during the night-time hours Sidhaeg can shapeshift into a large gray wolf, as well as shifting over only her head to wolf shape, which is called the Anubis form. It is only in this form that she can turn another werewolf. She hasn’t technically learned it yet, in canon, but it would be fun to have her discover it in-game.
# Full Moon: At the full moon, Sidhaeg is forced into the shape of the wolf and loses all control over her mind and hunting instinct. A werewolf at the full moon wants only to hunt, kill, and feed-- preferably on humans. She must be locked up at these times.
# Supernatural abilities: Greatly increased speed, strength, and healing factor, but only when the sun is down.
# Supernatural senses: No matter what form she wears and no matter what time of day, Sidhaeg’s senses of hearing and smell are far keener than a mortal’s: they rival and even surpass those of a true wolf.
# Weaknesses: Silver and sunlight. Daylight hours cap all of her abilities near to mortal level, and in fact makes her rather sleepy, and silver is poison to her. Wounds caused by silver will not heal at her supernatural speed, wounds with silver still in them will make her ill and quite possibly kill her, and restraints made of silver negate her supernatural strength and speed.

Inventory:
# A threadbare velvet cloak and a length of plaid fabric, Kingair pattern. Nothing more.

Appearance:

Tall and strong, topping six feet easily and made of more muscle than most women of her time, Sidheag Maccon, the Lady Kingair, is not strong-featured and particularly pretty, though some might be charitable and call her “handsome”. Her nose is prominent, her cheekbones even more so, and her skin weathered with an ageless and craggy quality. Even turned at forty, her hair long, coarse brown hair had started to go gray, and now it is forever streaked with it. Her eyes are a tawny golden-brown, but intensity of emotion tends to turn them a more wolfish yellow. She speaks with a very obvious Scottish accent. Though she is most used to gowns, albeit rather plain and shabby ones, she could easily enough adapt to skirts and is immodest enough to not mind being seen in nothing but a cloak.

In wolf form, Sidheag is an ordinary gray in color, grizzled with white around the paws and muzzle, but big: very, very big. Every ounce of flesh and muscle she had as a woman translates into wolf shape, and she’s both tall and brawny. She looks more like the monster of a wolf one imagines in fairy tales than the usual rangy creature of the woods.

PB: Mira Furlan, from Lost
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Sidheag Maccon, Lady Kingair

February 2013

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