Post by bri2 on Jul 11, 2012 10:51:21 GMT -8
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Josian Temperance Sedlowe
Gender: Female
Age/DOB: 325 (She appears to be in her late twenties, as she was turned when 28)/ March 14th , 1687
Occupation: Psychologist's assisstant, but she doesn’t need a real job. She’s a modern day pirate, complete with a boat.
Race: Vampire
Appearance;
Although average height for a woman of her time, Josie is drastically shorter than most women of this day and age, standing at 5’2.” What she makes up for in height, though, she makes up for in legs. Unlike many shorter women, she isn’t stocky, but retains a slim figure of mostly legs due to the fact that most women were arguably of the same shape before they had children during her time. Her skin is relatively pale, though pale is an ugly word and she would much rather be called fair. Her eyes are a light shade of hazel. They can appear blue, green, or brown, though they are truly mostly brown. The color of dark chocolate, her hair reaches long past her shoulders down to the middle of her back. She often keeps it in its natural form, which is slightly curly and wavy. However, sometimes, she does stoop down to this era and straighten it. As for style, she always sports clothes that are reminiscent of her era, the late 1600s and early 1700s. No, she does not wear ball gowns. In example, she wears instead modern clothes with a twist of Victorian era elegance, such as lace and ruffles.
Personality;
Josian is a fireball. She was raised to be such, but she has a curious way of acting with her fiery nature. She is not vulgar; that is not lady like, and though it may be the 21st century, she will still remain a lady of the sea. Her energy is reserved for the tasks that need it most, like her late night escapades onto the open waters to bring down unsuspecting targets. She does not kill them, but instead removes anything of worth from their midst and sells it on the black market. She is, after all, a pirate. In her eyes, she sees herself as somewhat of a Robin Hood, as she does invest some of her money into charities. Therefore, she is not inherently evil, but instead, more of a chaotic neutral. She does what must be done without regret, even if that means breaking all the rules, as those rules are not her own. She lives by the pirate code of her day with a few of Josie’s twists, and it will always be so.
Like any sea-farer, Josie is superstitious to the fullest extent. For instance, cats bring luck if they approach and stay with a sailor, but if the cat approaches then walks away, it is bad luck. Also, never throw a cat overboard. It will bring storms down upon the boat. Whistling on a boat is simply forbidden, as it will bring bad winds, and if a wine glass begins to make sounds, abandon all hope; every member of the crew is soon to perish. IF an acorn is placed in the window, then it will keep lightning out. If a bird gets into the house, it is a sign of death, and if someone dies in doors, all windows must be opened immediately so the soul may escape. If there is a superstition, no matter how ridiculous it may seem to some, Josie most likely believes in it whole-heartedly.
As is to be presumed, Josie is old-fashioned. She likes Victorian era music, classical music, and some of the softer more contemporary songwriters of today. Of course, those songs do not come close to even fitting her actions. If anything, she could be described as a dramatic film score. Her actions are based upon the moment, and sometimes, that moment requires for the death of another. No, she does not like to kill and keeps it to a minimum, but sometimes, it has to be done in her line of work. Movies are not really her thing. She has lived real adventure, and so it can never compare, especially not those Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I mean, really, what were they thinking? The black mark cannot be cured. They simply should have left Will to his fate.
Speaking of fate, she is not at all happy with hers. She despises being the creature that she is. She wishes to b human again, and that is why she went to college to become a psychiatrist, so she may always remember how humans think. However, human thoughts are changing, and she does not like it at all. The men now openly think of only one thing usually, and that is women. At least in her day and age, the gentlemen kept that to themselves. The women are getting more independent, which is not especially bad, but in doing so, they are becoming more disrespectful and much less ladylike.
Josie is also a collector of Victorian and pirate relics. Her entire house is decorated with them. For her, they bring back memories of a different time, of her life before she became what she is, a vampire. There is nothing more that she wishes for than to return to that life, though it will never be done; it will always be in her dreams. This world is too complicated. They are simply too many gadgets and too much technology. In fact, she believes that such things have spoiled the world, taken all the adventure away and cast it into the abyss. Only the open sea is free, and so that is where she spends most of her free time. Anything to get away from society, and in fact, her house is void of all technology except the ones she deems have helped the world. She has a refrigerator, a gas stove, a stereo, plumbing, and electric lights. However, you will find no tv, no computer, and certainly no gaming system.
She spends her time in her home sewing, as is customary for ladies to do. Even though she is a pirate for life, even on her ship, she was still a lady. She only wore pants instead of a dress out of necessity for the work conditions. She did spit and curse like the men of the ship, but instead just relished in the adventure. In that sense, she is an adrenaline junky with a conflicting personality. She cannot decide between manners and adventure, and so has found her own way to combine them into exactly who she is: Josian Sedlowe.
Likes: The sea, open air, the outdoors, the forest, hiking, exploring, ballroom dancing- not that she gets to do much of that, sailing, the color purple- after all, it symbolized royalty in her time, adventure, swords- she collects them along with ancient relics
Dislikes: Downtown areas with only buildings, technology, these rude men that this day and age has created, women who show too much skin- it’s not lady like of course, people who keep secrets from her, liars, people without a moral code, being a vampire, the 21st century
Strengths: Obviously, she has all the powers of a vampire, which makes her super strong, have keen senses, heals quickly, ability to speak many languages, she is also charming, sense of self-identity, confidence, intelligent
Weaknesses: Weaknesses of a vampire, sunlight- though she can tolerate it pretty well now, fire, bloodlust- though she has learned to control that excellently, strangeness- the humans know she is different and she doesn’t hide it, doesn’t always listen to others, stubborn, superstitious, set in her ways
Fears: Losing control of her vampiric nature, going to jail- though she would undoubtedly just escape, she has before, becoming like the people of this era
History;
Josian was born in an English port town. It was large for the era, but small compared to the cities of today. Her parents were upper-class citizens, and in fact, very influential. They had a manor larger than most mansions today. Of course, back in 1687 when she was born, middle names were a rarity. She only received one because she was so close to royalty that her parents deemed it necessary. Life was boring. She grew up a girl, which meant no school, though her older brothers taught her how to read and write. Her family was quite large. She had one other sister, though she was twelve years older than Josian and therefore not much fun to play with, and three older brothers, the closest of which was only a year older. The boys were much more fun to be around, and therefore, she played with them. Nevertheless, she never lost her ladylike qualities. She retained them even as a child, for she clung dearly to the fact that ladies were supposed to be creatures of elegance, even when having fun.
As the years passed, Josian became more and more restless sewing with her mother while men courted her with flowers and serenades. She did not want to be stuck in the house for the rest of her life bearing five children like her mother. She wanted a life full of adventure, and so when she was nineteen, she packed her things, kissed her family goodbye as they slept, and left the manor in stealth. She stole away on carriage to the local tavern, a place she had never set foot. It was dizzying, the smells of alcohol mixed with sweat and the stench of men who did not bathe even once a week, or ever, but she knew that this mix of odors was the smell of the start of a lifetime of adventure. None of the captains would take her, of course. It was bad luck to bring a woman aboard, so Josian chopped her beautiful hair off and traded her dress for a men’s blouse, pants, belt, and leather boots. She was a feminine looking man, but the years of playing with her brothers had paid off. She was strong, and the captains could see that.
She was soon crew to a ship named Constance. It was a tiring job, but the wind in her hair made up for the blisters and rope burns on her hands. For year, she sailed with the same captain, Captain Lewis Davies. It was a trade ship that did business between England and the New World. For awhile, it was adventure enough after the Constance was attacked by a pirate vessel, a vessel with the captain being Blackbeard himself. It was in that moment that Josie new that she did not want to remain on a trade vessel, but on a pirate ship. Blackbeard raided and destroyed the ship with cannon fire, leaving many dead and many more injured. Josian escaped simply by being intelligent enough to know where to hide, away from the side being attacked. While other men fought bravely, she did not. She knew what she wanted, and if she fought, she may not get it. Therefore, when a pirate drew his sword on her, she surrendered, begging to parlay. In fact, it worked, and she was brought before Blackbeard. He made her a member of his crew in 1714. However, she only stayed one year.
In 1715, she was thrown overboard for being a woman. In that moment, she believed her life was over. Everything she’d strove for was simply done. The sharks would claim her body. Floating out in the open water with nothing but her rapier and a single shot pistol, she waited to die, but it would not be so.Days passed, she did not know how many. She had only counted the jellyfish stings and times she’d spotted sharks. 16 jellyfish stings. 3 sharks. Eventually though, a light in the distant night caught her attention. It was like the light of a ship, a welcome sight, and sure enough, the ship’s bell could be heard ringing, echoing across the expanse of crashing waves. After nearly an hour ,the ship was close enough to see a women in nothing but her undergarments, which still covered nearly her entire body, adrift at sea. A sense of relief flooded her, she screamed out, cried for her life.
A longboat was sent to retrieve her. It seemed to take days, but the adrenaline coursing through her made her forget how much pain she was in, how thirsty she was, and very strange these men looked. That night, she drank more water than she had in the rest of her entire lifetime. She slept deeper than when she was merely a baby. For a few days, she was left to recover, and recover is what she did. However, her paradise did not last long. In the middle of the night after a week, she was led out onto the deck. The crew was hard at work, singing songs, but something was wrong. They just seemed… different. They didn’t seem human, and she couldn’t remember a time when they were actually out in the sunlight. It was weird, this nocturnal crew. The captain showed her around his beautiful ship, which was named Blood’s Bell, an interesting name for sure.
After she was introduced to the crew, she was brought to the captain’s office, where she was faced with an ultimatum: Become crew for life or face the open ocean once more. Without thinking, without asking questions, Josie had agreed to become part of the crew. Little did she know that it meant becoming a vampire, but that is exactly what happened. The captain, Robert Tweede, drained her of nearly all her blood, and then made her feast upon his. Her transition to vampire took almost a year. It was a slow and sometimes painful process, but once it was over, she felt more alive than ever before. For a decade, they remained pirates through the golden age of piracy and even after. However, even the best times come to an end.
Once they set shore, the captain asked her to come with him, and so she did. They lived a “normal” life as mere thieves in a large city for nearly 20 years, which was a mistake. People noticed that their looks never changed. They were branded as monsters and set to be stoned, staked, and burned. Robert died that year, but Josian escaped. For the rest of her life, she moved from city to city all across the United States, and sometimes even in England, her birth country, never staying in one place for more than 8 years. It was a hard life, but she became rich. Josian did not give up her pirate ways, but instead began to steal not only for herself but the less fortunate. She was certainly a Robin Hood vampire, with a few differences. She was not opposed to killing if it was absolutely necessary, and she had a burning desire for blood.
As her life grew dull just wandering around the wilderness after reaching port one night, snacking on any explorers she might find alone the way, Josian decided to settle down. Her first town of choice was St. Kitts, a British colony in the new world. She lived there for nearly a decade when one of her suitors caught wind of what she really was. It started with just rumors about how that Sedlowe girl never walked outside in the sun, but James Edwards investigated much too far. One night, he was skulking around her shack when he caught her red-handed with a victim. She had been so thirsty, as it was her goal to stretch the time in between feedings. In her head, she figured that if she could stretch the time, eventually she wouldn’t have to feed at all. However, that dream has never been realized, and it certainly wasn’t realized in St. Kitts. Josie didn’t have the heart to kill a man who loved her so dearly, and therefore, she didn’t. She stole off into the darkness of the night, never to return to her first real home since her childhood.
Instead, Josie decided to sail the seas again. For 40 years, she sailed in peace, getting different crews at different ports as often as was possible. To the untrained eye, her goal was simple: steal valuables and acquire gold. However, Captain Josian was working on the real goal: become immune to the sun. Every single day, she forced herself to go out on deck in the sun. Every day, she brought pain on herself. IN the sun, she could not only feel pain, but see it, smell it, and hear it. Pain was in every ounce of her being, and she was completely blind. However, year by year, the pain lessened. It took decades, though, for the blindness to become even slightly better.
Interrupting her goal to reconnect with part of her humanity, the part that could actually go outside in the light, was the American Revolution. Embargos were placed between Britain and America, and as allies shifted amongst the great world powers, those embargos also shifted. She couldn’t pirate for any one nation now. In fact, she couldn’t pirate at all unless he wanted to end up rotting in a jail cell. Captain Sedlowe tried to keep sailing, but it became harder and harder to find a crew. Despite the promise of ending up behind bars, Josie bought the smallest vessel she could find with any amount of cannon fire, took a crew of 10, and set sail. It was only 3 years later that she was caught but the American trading companies. They threw her in a rotting pit, threatening to execute her with every day that passed. Of course, they never got that chance. Josian escaped by breaking down the wall in the middle of the night. She escaped and disappeared from history for 5 years. In truth, she was just living in the forest outside of town. She moved to a new spot every few months. The citizens of the town were her food, and in this seclusion, she could continue trying to recapture her humanity.
The year was 1783. It was the year the Britain decided there would be no further hostilities with America. For that, Josie was glad. She had somehow luckily avoided the war. If it had taken place during her pirating years, it certainly would have had an effect on her plunders. For a few months, Josie searched around for the perfect city, and decided to settle in New York. It was a bustling port city and reminded her of the colony she’d grown up in, not because of the British rule, but because it was fringed by an ocean.
Josie lived in New York for nearly 40 years, watching it grow every step of the way. She went through having to watch the slave trade grow, which did not agree with, to seeing the enactment of the bill of rights. Every 10 years, she would venture off out into the wilderness for a year, then return with a different alias and different hair style. It was pure genius, and it got her by. However, Josie was not happy. This technology was ruining everything. It was making life too complicated for her. For others, it made them lazy. They didn’t even have to write letters anymore. They just had to pick up some machine and they could speak. Where was the humanity in that? The world was turning to nothing but machines. There were no people anymore, just machine operators. Josian knew she had to get away, and that’s exactly what she did.
Certain that she could not bear to live in another of the English towns, as they were rapidly growing ever since the American Revolution, Josian began to live amongst Native American tribes. They did not always except the pale skinned woman who spoke the words of the white man, but most did. She had farming methods and secrets about the colonists to tell them, and they eagerly listened. She learned to speak many Native languages, including Atakapa, Kato, Santee, and Hopi.
For 15 years, she stayed with the Atakapa. They revered her as a God, as they themselves were man-eaters. In their ways, they did not feast on blood only, but it was close enough for them. With her super strength and aversion to sunlight, they believed she was their goddess of the moon. She could have lived with them forever as more than royalty, but the Indian Removal Act forced them onto reservation lands, where they fought with other Native tribes. Josie had moved with them, but soon, there were not enough Atakapa to defend her from the others, and so she fled.
Her next stop was the Santee, which was more inland than the Atakapa tribe she had stayed with. The Santee were not as peaceful toward her as the Atakapa, but they were fit enough to house her. She provided for them what food she could by hunting with the men, something she had never cared to have a nightmare about. She also helped to build their homes. In their eyes, she was free labor who they never saw eat. It was quite nice. Though, they couldn’t help but notice that their tribe diminished in size after awhile, and that perhaps it was not bears. Josie was kicked out in one year, but she heard a few years later the Sioux, the umbrella term for many nations, including the Santee, had been sent to reservations.
The Kato were her next asylum, though that lasted only two years, as they were removed from their land as well. She was not revered as a god by them, but all the same, they respected her ability to bring down deer for the tribe. The Sioux valued you her as a warrior. Tough it was not common for Native women to fight, she was not Native; she was a white woman, and therefore not the same. She did not have to behave as a Native women would, though Josie secretly wished she did. She missed being a lady of England. Nevertheless, after two years, the Kato were removed. It was truly unfortunate that they were moved to Indian lands, as she had traveled from East coast to West coast just to get away from the Indian Removal Act. It hadn’t worked.
For nearly six years, Josie wandered again. She watched as towns grew to cities and as forests were chopped down. Women became less elegant, though still quite refined. However, in many colonies, the women actually worked in the fields and did chores. It was not befitting of a lady, and Josian certainly wanted no part of it. To avoid such monstrosity, she searched for anew tribe, and came upon the Hopi. They were peaceful, and only asked that she follow their ways. Of course, the Hopi knew that something was different about her besides her white skin. She was not like the other women, she was more like a man. She could fight and hunt better than any of their warriors. However, they noticed she had a strange way of speaking for the white man. Her speech was elegant and her accent thickly British, though they did not know of which country she spoke, only that it was not America. They accepted her for 7 years, but then told her she must leave for the white men were coming to claim their land, and that she must not be involved in their wars.
After being forced to leave so many of the Native tribes, and with the rise of America, Josie decided that she needed to try and live amongst the Americans again. Since she’d been gone from the world of the Americans, Texas had become a state by force during the Texas Revolution, and many other states had joined the United States of America. Josie knew that she could not settle down again. It was too esay for people to just call each other up and spread rumors from city to city about a vampire. No, to survive, she had to travel from major city to major city, never living in one place for more than 12 years. That was the max, and she did like to push her luck, as what else could she do? This shuffling around with different aliases and different jobs lasted for 36 years.
She had to live through the American Civil War, on the side of the North, and therefore could only live in Northern towns for the latter half of those 36 years. She personally witnessed Abraham Lincoln’s assassination , and was none too pleased with it. He was a fine man, if not a little contradictory on his views on slaves.
Always akin to nature, as soon as Yellowstone National Park was established, Josie was there to hike among it’s forests and camp with the wolves and bears. She was actually very devastated the farmers could kill such magnificent creatures just because they took a few of their livestock. In fact, it reminded her of her own plight against the humans. They would kill her if they knew she attacked people too, but she was a predator, just trying to survive, as were the wolves.
When gold was discovered in Yukon, Josian high-tailed it out of Wyoming. Gold was one of her passions, and she become a prospector. It was strange being with all the men, but she made sure to always look like a lady, though she didn’t act like one at all times, and stay away from the dynamite, which was an useful invention in her eyes.
Her lest favorite invention of them all, at the time, was the motor car. Were people so lazy that they could not take care of horses or walk? Instead, they had a monster of a machine drive them. It was appalling and Josie vowed to never use one the very first day she laid eyes on its mechanical frame. Of course, she’d never expected cars to become as popular as they did. The promise, obviously, was not kept.
Next came the radio. It was an awful invention, really. Why did everyone need to hear stories about made of characters? They should be living adventures of their own, just like it was done in her day. Instead of hearing about cowboys, people actually had to be them to get such adrenaline. Now, everything was just stories. There was no adventure left. Josie had to live in a house and go to a factory to use machines that sewed blouses instead of crafting the blouse from scratch. It was demeaning to her talents, but it was the way she had to live. Well, not technically, she could have had a mansion with all the gold she had stored in banks across the nation, but that simply was not in her plan. She had to appear normal and not raise any questions to stay alive.
Soon after the radio and the golden age of the glamorous 1920s, came the Great Depression. It did not hit Josie hard. This was the one time that she decided to delve into her riches stored away in vaults. After all, she could not be reduced to a sobbing pile of worthlessness. There were no jobs, and there was no food, but it was not herself she was feeding with the money she removed from the vault. She used the money to pay bills, and to help the needy. The poor should not suffer while the rich swam in money. That was when her mind switched from cold-blooded piracy to piracy for a cause. She began breaking into wealthy households not for the odd beggar while the rest of the money went to herself, but for anyone that she could give it to, and only using the money she had left to pay bills. Of course, next to Bonnie and Clyde, who made their robberies public, she was nothing, and caught no p public attention, which is exactly how she wanted it.
The only thing that stopped the depression was the war. World War I, which she barely remembered due to the massive chunk of memory that world war 2 took residence in, was incomparable in size. Only one good-thing could be said about World War 2. It brought new, much-needed jobs. With all the men at war, Josie stopped stealing for the poor as the women became the real workers. To blend in, Josie made up stories about her husband was fighting the the U.S. just like everyone else’s, and that to make money for herself, she had to work. Therefore, she threw away her ideals of a lady, just for awhile, and became a fisher. The boats were not at all the same as what she was used to. They had motors, not sails, but the open ocean was refreshing and the thrill of catching fish was a welcome change from the war propaganda that played on every in-town radio. Of course, the radio was not her most hated technology. No, that, my friends, was the atomic bomb. It reared it’s head for the first time on Hiroshima. Josie had been devastated. Over the years, she’d become a much more sensitive person that her old cut-throat pirating self, not that she was entirely good, but now, she just had a little bit more of a heart. The irony of that, with her being a vampire and all, is priceless, but even she had to smile when she thought about it.
As soon as World War 2 ended, the Cold War began. Josie quit her job as a fisher and became the receptionist at a hotel. It was a job where she could always be indoors, not having to worry about pain from sunlight, which she had grown quite a tolerance to over the years. People became crazy. They started sending up these strange machines into the sky. As if there was actually something more out there. Sure, Josie had seen pictures, but this was crazy. Why did it even matter that men had been to the moon? It was completely unnecessary and a waste of money. Technology sucked the United States’ funds dry. She was surprised there wasn’t another depression, and all because of a fool’s deserve to have more technology. Why couldn’t these people just be happy like her family had been? Like he crew had been? The world was much too complicated now.
She spent most of her time alone, away from the tvs, which had killed the radio. Funny how technology was so cannabilistic. It was almost like her kind, but at least she did not ruin an entire a world, just a few lives every now and then. As time passed in this modern day world, Josina began to wonder just why it was that people so dearly loved technology. Were their brains different than hers? Did they think different? Because of her curiosity, she went to school to become a psychiatrist. It took nearly 20 years, as she had a hard time adapting to school. She had never actually been and had had to forge documents about high school. It was really frustrating and extremely unlike her, but she just had to know why they humans so loved this world. In the end, she got her degree, but her business failed. No one wanted a shrink that looked younger than her. Unsatisfied with that, Josian settled for a psychiatrist’s assistant.
She has learned much about the unstable kind of humans, the ones they lock away in mental hospitals, but nothing really about technology. There were only a few like her who feared it. Josie knew it would end the world some day, but no one would listen. In fact, she actually spend some time in a mental hospital, losing her license as a psychiatrist. It wasn’t a fun place at all, but, in the end, they discharged her. She’d faked every last bit of their so-called “sanity” to escape. No, she wasn’t insane, but she also wasn’t what they would call normal.
Josie had lived in nearly every state, though she favored the ones of the east coast, which is how she ended up in Massachusetts. This state is the state she’d been in when the world had invented cell phones. They were demonic little things that started out quite large, but worse were the computers created many many years before. The wars of this day and age are much smaller scale, and there have been no atomic bombs dropped on cities. It was a feat that she did not think possible of humans: empathy. They seemed to selfish, but perhaps with large matters, they could understand why killing entire cities was wrong.
After living in a few small towns with aliases in Massachusetts, working in such places as bars and pretzel shacks, Josie grew tired of hiding. She moved to Saint Calais because the moment she stepped foot in the town, she could tell that there were others of her kind here. Many others. If they could live here, then so could she. Besides, if the humans found out, there would be nothing they could do. She was even sure that some did know, and yet she cared not. She was 325 years old. They couldn’t touch her, and so here she is, living in a port city again, working the seas any time she had the time, taking what she could, and living her life as Josian Temperance Sedlowe, not some alias she created to fit the age.
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OOC;
Name: Bri
Other Characters: Madeline Elise Larkin
Preferred method of contact: PM(:
How did you find us?: Looong story. But another site (:
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Also fixed that broken font size tag for you.