Character Avatar: Jessica Stam
Player: Desdemona
Character Name: Marcella Bardot
Age: 26
Birthday: June 23rd
Height: 5' 10"
Rank/Title: Servant of Naamah
Race: 1/2 d'Angeline, 1/2 Caerdiccian
Country/Province: l'Agnace
Townhome Request: Night's Doorstep > Chain and Lace > The Pleasure House owned by Marcella Bardot. It includes a more traditional pleasure room and a separate one with a decent sized dungeon in it. Her home is in a few rooms above the pleasure house.
Appearance: Marcella is a willowy woman with a face that looks like it should belong on a painting of mythical creatures. Her facial features are all very fine and delicate looking. Her lips are a perfect cupid's bow and she has cute little pixie nose that adds to her delicate features. Her eyes are a clear blue and are cut from the same mold as the rest of her features. When she is dressed fully in long dresses and the like Marcella is the image of a d'Angeline flower. She is pale enough for Cereus and perfect enough for Camellia. The rest of her, however, is not perfect. Marcella's legs and torso are criss-crossed with a variety of scars. She also has one very noticeable scar on her upper left arm, making sleeveless dresses impossible if she wants to give off an air of d'Angeline perfection.
Marque: She is fully marked, but it is a unusual mark that speaks mostly of Cereus, but is flanked by some Valerian flowers and has the typical Valerian base.
Personality: The Marcella that you meet depends on the role that she is playing. She can be a proper and elegant Servant of Namaah, using her years of training and instructing at Cereus House. She can also play the submissive and enjoys it, when there is coin, though she'd never be a lifestyle submissive. Behind close doors Marcella is a calculating woman. She prefers to track down her Patrons instead of waiting for them to come to her. Occasionally she'll also play the dealer of fate, when she feels that someone has earned it. She has very few friends, but she does have a few and she has respect among the other freelance Servants of Naamah that she knows, since she will warn them of a potentially dangerous Patron and doesn't seem to fear anyone.
Additional Information
Marital Status: Single
Known Languages: 1/2 d'Angeline, 1/2 Caerdiccian
Strengths and Weaknesses:
Strengths: street smart
Weaknesses: Nerve disorder, can be very reckless in some situations
Family Members/Important NPCs:
Mother: Anita (Bardot) Monteil (NPC)
Step-Father: Jean-Loup Monteil (NPC)
History: Marcella was born to a Cereus adept who had lit her candle and choose to have a child with a favorite patron of hers. He was a scholar from Tiberium and was leaving Terre d'Ange to return home. He had contracted her for one last night at his home and Anita received the blessings from her House to bare for them a child that was likely to be born of the preferred look and complexion for Cereus. The Tiberium was a pale blond man with blue eyes, just like Anita. The candle was lit and the child was given by the gods. She was a doll face little baby girl with blue eyes and pale blond hair. Cereus and her mother was hopeful, figuring the only thing that would prevent the girl from becoming another pretty adept would be her refusal to enter Namaah's service.
Marcella was on track to follow her mother's vocation. As she grew she kept her blond hair and blue eyes. She had the natural beauty of the d'Angelines, even if she shared the blood from a Caerdiccian. She happily entered into the young adept training at the age of 10 and all was going well. Marcella's mother had stayed on at Cereus, though with her candle lit her service was used more in training and raising the children. She still took on the occasional assignation when they could be carefully timed to not bring on anymore children.
For a year Marcella had her mother as one of her Cereus instructors. Then Anita found another love, this time a title-less d'Angeline that had found some money in figuring out how to get the cocoa bean from Terra Nova to grow locally. He was not the only one, but he had gone on the first expedition as a hired hand and was able to start cultivating the crop early, before the market had flooded. He made enough money to afford occasional trips to the Night Court, trips that came more often after he meet Marcella's mother. The two hit it off and when Marcella was 11 her mother decided to finally exit her service and marry the cocoa bean farmer. It was with many tears on both sides that Marcella said goodbye to her mother, who promised to visit often since her new husband did not live too far away.
Life as a young adept was a busy one and Marcella had to put any ill feelings that she had for her mother's new husband behind her and focus on her classes. Anita did keep her word and visited Marcella as often as she could. Her husband Jean-Loup Monteil visited with and tried to make friends with his wife's first child. Marcella was cordial, though she could never bring herself to truly like the man that had inserted himself into her world. It did not help when her mother started to show up with round bellies and later with babies and half siblings. It was a family growing and living it's life without her. Marcella and Jean-Loup started to save the money to pay off Marcella's care at Cereus, but Marcella told them not to. She told them that she didn't want them to spend the kind of money that would be required to purchase an adept who had not even started her marque yet. She had put in time and effort in learning her craft and she intended to not let that time go to waste. In truth, she didn't want to join a world where she was not her mother's only child. Though her mother helped with the adepts when she was still at Cereus, they were not her children, only Marcella had been, it made her special. She wouldn't feel special being just another farmer's daughter.
As Marcella approached the age in which she would be allowed to make her debut, all seemed to be well. She would, at times, act as if she thought she was a little more special than the other adepts, but at times many adepts get a bit self focused. She would be put into her place by an instructor if necessary and life would move along. Marcella's friends were few, but again, the House could be competitive and not much was made of that either. She did have some friends.
When Marcella was only two months shy of her debut things started to go sideways for her. She had been experiencing tingling sensations in her feet, but between dance lessons, learning to walk gracefully, chores, and the many other things that kept her busy Marcella didn't think much of it. When she stepped on a broken piece of pottery in the kitchen one day and didn't seem to notice, then something was made of it. Marcella left a bloody footprint trail and didn't notice until one of the cooks screamed and Marcella was rushed out to see a healer. She did not have a tiny cut, she was losing a substantual amount of blood. Her wound was attended too and the cut sewed shut. It was then that they realized that Marcella could no longer feel pain in either of her feet. She had tripped and stubbed toes as a child and knew those had hurt, but her feet no longer felt pain.
There was some discussion among the Dowayne, the healer, a knowledgeable Eisheth priest, and Marcella. Neither healer had encountered such a thing before. Marcella was close to her debut so after some pleading on her part it was decided that she would fly her dove. She was told by her Dowayne and the healers that she must carefully guard her feet and never let them get hurt while she was at an assignation. It was also up to her to make sure she didn't do anything to disfigure herself. The wound on her foot had healed and had left no visible scar, but the next accident might.
Marcella made her debut and she carefully managed her feet and her assignations. Cereus Patrons were not the most aggressive of the lot by any means. But, an accidental trip or a overly passionate Patron not paying attention, could hurt Marcella and she may not know until it was too late to hide her ailment. She did well at first, but her inability to feel pain slowly crept up from her feet to her calves. By the time she was 17 Marcella could not feel any sort of pain below her knees.
Though Marcella was careful, she could not avoid all bumps and bruises. Her inability to feel pain also meant that she would often over-work herself. She enjoyed walking and never grew tired or had sore feet. She could not tell if her shoes were ill-fitting until it showed in the form of damage to her feet. She refused to live locked up in her rooms and sometimes things happened when she was outside of the house seeing the city, though all of her wounds so far had been fairly minor. She was in the habit of nightly foot checks since she was prone to small sores on the bottoms of her feet, sores that other adepts never seemed to get. No one was sure why she got them, but they would respond quickly to salve. Still, when she had one the Dowayne wouldn't set her up on an assignation and Marcella would be left with tiresome chores that she could complete while sitting and staying off of her feet.
Because the Dowayne did not want her adept to get hurt she was very choosy in picking Marcella's patrons. This meant Marcella's mark grew slowly. Marcella found the care that she had to take during an assignation frustrating and she never truly enjoyed herself. One year, at Midwinter, she ended up in conversation with a Valerian adept. Her desperate care to not get hurt had given her a fascination in Valerian, the house that allowed themselves to get hurt and feel pain. Marcella felt that her traits were better used there. Valerian's patrons knew of human limits and they had to take care in what they were doing. Cereus Patrons did not have to give that same kind of care since they usually did not have to worry about hurting adepts. Though she knew it would probably anger her House, Marcella went back to Mandrake with that same adept and a Mandrake, not telling them of her feet and legs. She wanted to learn about their world and put her care in someone else's hands for once. The trio enjoyed themselves very much and Marcella found that she enjoyed the pain, feeling something she had been spending half of her life carefully avoiding.
It took Marcella few days to build courage for what she wanted to ask the Dowayne, but she did finally approach her and tell her of her Midwinter. She begged the Dowayne to ask Valerian if they wanted to buy the rest of her mark. The Dowayne told her that Valerian is not going to pay for a 20 year old adept that had 2/3rds of a Cereus mark already tattooed on her back. The Dowayne also felt that she'd be a even bigger liability to Valerian, regardless of Marcella's opinion on that topic.
Marcella was to stay at Cereus until her marque was complete, something that she was fine with until that fateful night. Now, it was something that depressed her. She moved about her day on auto pilot, coming alive during her assignations so she could build her mark, and then shutting down after. She started to hurt herself more often during this time period, though mostly minor bumps and bruises that would heal within time.
A few weeks before her 21st natal Marcella was walking through the streets of Mont Nuit not really paying much attention to he surroundings. Some of her fellow adepts had invited her out for some drinks and she went simply so she could take a break from looking at Cereus' walls for a while. She was not really feeling their gaiety, however, and was barely aware of the world around her. She was crossing the street and had drifted a few feet behind the other adepts. A man on a horse was galloping through the streets, assuming that everyone would stay out of his way and not being very careful. Marcella walked into the horses path and neither the horse or the man noticed in time to keep the horse from running into her. By some ounce of luck or intervention from the gods, Marcella was kicked and thrown away from the horse instead of trampled underneath it's hooves. One of the adepts that had been in the small party had a carriage summoned and Marcella was quickly swept away to Cereus so her wounds could be attended to.
At Cereus her usual healers were tasked with the job of making sure she stayed alive and repairing her wounds. She was covered in bruises from the incident, but her biggest injury came from being thrown from the horse. She had gained a very large cut on the top of her arm, one that the healers said would probably scar, and scar it did. It was too noticeable for the Dowayne, she could no longer contract Marcella out.
When Marcella had recovered enough she once again begged her Dowayne to ask Valerian if she could work for them. Since her Dowayne could no longer use her as an adept she agreed to it and Valerian's Dowayne was sent a letter requesting a meeting.
During the meeting the Dowayne and Marcella's caregivers were honest and straight forward with the Valerian Dowayne, making sure she knew exactly what she would be paying for if she did decide to buy Marcella's mark. The Dowayne liked Marcella's look, her delicate features would appeal to some of her Patrons. The scar on her shoulder meant nothing, other Valerians had scars. She was concerned about Marcella's occasional issues with sores on her feet, but Marcella assured the Dowayne that she would be extra careful about taking care so they would not be an issue. It was highly unusual for an adept to change houses at an older age. There was also the issue of her marque. It was 2/3rds complete in the traditional Cereus fashion. Would she have half a marque for one house and then another? The Valerian mark could be altered slightly to connect, but would Patrons want a Valerian adept without the marque they were used to seeing?
After much discussion Valerian decided to give Marcella a trial run. She would stay with them for 6 months and they would see how it went. Regardless of her choices on Midwinter, she would still have to keep care during an assignation, but the Valerian Dowayne decided that she would tell potential Patrons of her adept's unusual traits. Then she could make them sign a clause that they would not cause her undo harm and take extra care of her feet and legs. Marcella had admitted that her lack of sensation had effect both of her legs and almost in their entirety. She could still feel them enough to walk gracefully, but she didn't feel external pressure or sensation. She felt as if she was a set of bones wearing her skin as a set of clothes.
Marcella fared better at Valerian than she did at Cereus. The Dowayne decided to have her marque modified, which meant Marcella would have to work a few extra assignations to earn the money needed to finish her marque. At first, she didn't care, she enjoyed her assignations more. Due to her very late start Marcella spent long hours sitting in the back of classrooms with younger adepts, catching up on missed lessons specific to Valerian. She took on assignations as well. The routine kept her very tired, but Marcella hid her fatigue as best she could, fearing that she would be sent back to Cereus. The fatigue was slowly catching up to her and was effecting her judgement, causing her to be less careful in assignations and she would sometimes let her Patrons go too far.
One night, only 6 months after her switch, Marcella had a Patron that let his curiosity and blood lust get the better of him. He kept on testing her inability to feel pain over and over. He also cut her deeper than one could do so safely. Though Marcella knew that she should have given him her signale, she choose not to. At first she felt more alive then she had during the last few weeks, her lack of sleep making her feel as if she was walking through fog. She was curious as well and in a way she felt as if she was rebelling against her ill-formed legs. But, after a while she went from feeling awake to feeling sleepy again and soon she watched her world go dark as Marcella passed out from blood loss. It was only then that her Patron finally realize that he had gone to far and he ran from the room. A Valerian guard caught him and it did not take long for them to find out what happened. Valerian set all of their best healers on Marcella, stitching her up as quickly as they could. She didn't wake for three days and when she finally did she was made to eat a host of foods thought to help one regain blood.
The man was, of course, punished and banished from ever visiting any of the Night Court houses. When the Dowayne found out that Marcella had not given her signale she decided that Marcella would no longer be able to give assignations. They had spent a lot of their effort and resources on keeping her alive, they were not going to do that again for a irresponsible adept.
It was decided that Marcella would use her years as an adept to teach and finish up her marque. Since Marcella was still pretty new to the House she could not teach any of Valerian's specialty classes she was assigned to teaching the youngest adepts basics in courtesy and grace. Marcella finished up her time at Valerian earning a basic stipend from the House for her lessons. It took her two years, but at 23 she was able to finish her Marque and she took her leave from Cereus. At first Marcella went to her mother and step-father's home to help out around the farm. She was not happy with this life and she decided instead to become a Servant of Naamah. She opened up a small shop on Night's Doorstep and slowly gained enough customers to make a decent wage.
Though Marcella would take on the more typical Patrons who were just looking for a pretty woman to sleep with or bring to a party, she also attracted some more edgy customers. She enjoyed these much more and soon she started seeking them out. Without the protection of Night Court contracts she found that she would get hurt more often with some of these patrons. She found the danger of it enticing, however, not off putting. If a Patron was especially cruel, however, she would remember their face and seek them out, enacting some revenge of her own. She had been hurt in life, first by the step-father that stole her mom, then by the Houses that couldn't handle her illness. Lastly, she was hurt most severely by the irresponsible horseman who ruined her shoulder and took away her vocation as an adept. Though she enjoyed her freedom, she also enjoyed taking out her frustrations with her past on those Patrons who thought they were more important than her physical well being.
Marcella knows she plays a dangerous game, but with her unknown illness she doesn't know if she will live as long as other d'Angelines. She would prefer to live every moment of her life as she pleases, danger or not, and not waste it on the assumption that she will live a long life naturally. She still visits her family on occasion, but as she gets older the visits are fewer and fewer. With every scar that she gains she feels less like a pretty Night Court adept and more like her own woman in charge of her own world. Marcella wears her scars with pride, only hiding them when requested by a Patron when attending a public event.
Updates:
Approved by Merle - June 28th, 2018
