Satine Dubois/Bittersweet Apathy
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
NOTE: The following has been revealed to /very/ few people, and if you RP as if you know it without actually having been told any of this, it will be ignored. This is simply a background primer.
Bittersweet Apathy, or A Brief History of Satine Dubois
Caela O’Keith and the Vampire Lords of Paris
Caela O’Keith was born and raised as a poor Irish farm girl born, as best anyone can tell, in the spring of 1869. About the time she turned 15, Caela blossomed into a great beauty, a fact not lost on the wealthy land owner whom her family worked for. He took Caela in, much to her family’s outrage, and whisked her off to Paris to show his family his beautiful new pet.
Little did Caela know that in that first year of going to Paris, she would become the object of affection of two men – Mathieu Roux and Andreas Kabasilas (more commonly known as Dedrick von Nacht at the time). The wealthy land owner who had claimed Caela so early on began to run out of money for his extravagances just before the turn of the century, and at the urging of his friend Dedrick, he sold Caela to Charles Ziegler, proprietor of the Moulin Rouge. There Caela would adopt the name Arianne Burgeois, though she would never become a very well known “Diamond Dog”.
By about 1900, both Dedrick and Mathieu were competing heavily for Arianne’s attentions, though neither had yet revealed what they truly were to her. In a fit of passion, Mathieu bit the young woman, which she found she liked immensely. Fancying themselves in love, Mathieu arranged for Arianne to be released from her duties at the Moulin Rouge and took her in to his private residence. Little did Arianne know what Mathieu had planned for her – not the marriage she’d been hoping for, but rather, as his personal pet and concubine. She fell into a deep depression shortly after leaving the Moulin Rouge, and it is rumored that she made many attempts on her own life in the first year. After, though, it seemed that she began to enjoy her place as the favorite pet of Mathieu’s harem. She was completely and utterly loyal to the vampire within 18 months of coming to live with him.
Dedrick was outraged – not only had Mathieu managed to steal away the woman he desired above all others, he had made her fall completely in love with him. The two men had long been in a power struggle for control of the Parisian underworld, and Arianne’s abduction and “brain washing” were simply the final straw that broke the camel’s back. Dedrick swore he would have his revenge on both Master and pet, no matter how long it took…And in his twisted mind, he came up with a plan to ruin them both.
On a regular excursion to the local produce market in Paris one morning, Arianne was kidnapped by two of Dedrick’s henchman, and then taken directly to see the vampire. That first day, he showed Arianne what cruelty really was…
It would be several years before anyone would ever see the pair again.
Mathieu mourned the loss of his pet for a period of roughly six months before replacing her. He was walking outside one evening with his blonde bimbo when a car pulled up to the gates of the mansion, and a body was pushed out of the cab. Mathieu’s pet had been returned to him…some six months pregnant.
A Terrifying Pregnancy
Mathieu was outraged, not only at Arianne’s apparent betrayal, but at the fact she would dare to show her face to him again. No matter how long she pleaded that the child was a product of rape, and that she would never have left his side willingly, Mathieu never listened. In punishment, he blood bonded the poor woman to himself, halting the progression of the pregnancy completely, and making her completely his slave.
No longer did the woman enjoy her pet privileges – she became the whipping boy for Mathieu’s anger. She lived in terror of the vampire for years, with only a small comfort left to her in all that time – her daughter, lying apparently listless in her womb.
A Small Mind
It was shortly before returning to Mathieu that Arianne had the strangest sensation as she lay chained in Dedrick’s attic – that of a soft wind blowing over her skin, and a gentle tugging at her consciousness. The tugging was affectionate and overly curious, but with an underlying current of vampiric mind pressures…
It took Arianne days to realize that this wasn’t some trick of Dedrick’s. It was her growing daughter, reaching out to touch her. At first, she was determined to hate the child – who could love a daughter born of rape? – but the tugging became more insistent, and after the first few days of torment at Mathieu’s hands, the tugging became Arianne’s refuge. The two became very close as time went by, and Arianne was astonished to watch her daughter’s mind grow, though her body could not.
Arianne knew her daughter would be incredibly powerful one day, if she was allowed to be birthed…But she also knew that the girl’s birth would mean her death. In the end though, it was her daughter who decided the fate of both.
A Birth Six Decades in the Making
It took so many years of concentration, learning, and development before Arianne’s daughter began to manipulate living tissue at will. Arianne was incredibly awed and humbled the first time her daughter ever showed her the extent of her abilities – healing the cuts Mathieu had inflicted on the mother’s back with a knife – and she began to encourage the fetus to develop her own tissue. Both knew the outcome if she succeeded; at first, the girl-fetus resisted, but Arianne was insistent. Nourished only on vampiric blood for so long, it took longer than three months for the development to complete itself, but complete itself it did. Mother and daughter plotted and planned during this time for an ideal place to actually have the girl’s birth, and they finally found a little known convent and orphanage in the heart of Paris that would take them in.
Arianne made her break for it an hour after dawn, knowing that Mathieu couldn’t follow for the moment; little did she know that Mathieu had already guessed her plans, and paid off the nuns well in advance. Arianne went into labor March 26, 1968, at St. Marguerite's Home for Orphans, overseen by the nuns of the convent. Both mother and daughter had grossly misjudged the time it would take for the birthing process, though, and that evening, while still in labor, Mathieu caught up with them.
But even after all this time, Dedrick was still watching over Arianne and her own unborn child – his unborn child. Knowing full well that Mathieu was planning to kill both women once his daughter was born, he too paid off the nuns to keep the girl-child alive, but to not aid the mother if Mathieu did lash out.
At 3:06 am, March 27, 1968, Satine Arianne Burgeois-Dubois took her first look at the world through her own eyes. The nuns, pretending to be cleaning the child before handing her to Mathieu, secretly switched the girl with another child who’d been born that evening to a mother who hadn’t survived. Mathieu hadn’t gotten a good look at Satine as she was being born, and so when given the substitute child, he didn’t hesitate to believe that this really was his pet’s bastard love child. He slit the baby’s throat, and then proceeded to drain his beloved Arianne dry in the most painful way he could fathom.
Caela O’Keith drew her last breath at 3:10 am, amidst the screams and recriminations against Mathieu, Dedrick, and even her daughter. Satine, as she was named by the nuns, was still extraordinarily closely mentally knit to her mother, and experienced all the pain of her death as intimately as one can when living in someone else’s head. The fact that Arianne died cursing her daughter into oblivion for causing her this pain, this death, would forever weigh on Satine’s mind heavily and the young girl would find the guilt oftentimes hard to bear.
The First Decade
Satine was an exceptionally reserved child growing up, and always possessed this sort of unearthly aura about her – the nuns chalked it up to her bloody birth, though it was in fact due to her living and seeing and experiencing with her mother for almost six decades before she drew breath. Though he was enigmatic and compelling from an early age, the other children of St. Marguerite's Home for Orphans avoided her almost completely. The stories of her bloody birth were well known amongst the older children, who in turn passed it down to the younger ones…The first ten years of her life were spent in virtual isolation from the other children.
A Birthday Present that Keeps on Giving
The small birthday dinner the nuns threw for each of the children on their birthdays had somehow been even more crappy that day. Satine was ten, a milestone of sorts, and had been, up to this point, completely ignored by her father and was still thought dead by Mathieu.
But Dedrick wouldn’t give her peace, not now. She had the decade in which to physically mature enough for what he had in mind. The night of the party, he order two of his own pets, known far and wide for the sexual deviations and brutality, to go to her. They broke into the orphanage, one going up, carrying a duffle bag full of supplies, the other sneaking into the girl’s wing…The little girls were all sleeping, except for Satine, who felt before she ever saw the slight mental pressure the vampire was exerting to keep the others asleep…
…That night, she learned what physical pain was. They sliced her back to shreds, licking eagerly at the blood that pooled here and there…rubbed salt into the wounds…Turned her over, raping her repeatedly…The process lasted until just before dawn, when the took their leave, tucking her into bed.
She was wide-eyed in horror. And through this entire process, she’d never screamed, never whimpered…Never given them that satisfaction.
This process of rape and torture would happen once or twice a week for the next several years. After about six months, Satine stopped talking about it, stopped trying to tell someone what was going on…stop trying to get help. The nuns had been well paid to ignore Satine. The other children were afraid of her…
She would suffer in silence till she was sixteen.
”Bought and Paid For.”
Would this torture ever end? It seemed not. Six years had passed, all with her weekly visitors never letting her forget exactly where she ranked in the world – bleakly at the bottom. Each week it got easier for her to not scream, to not care, to just /not/ anything. It wasn’t that the young girl enjoyed the attentions of the two vampires…She just had lost all capacity to feel at a deep level – emotions had been beat and raped out of her.
At sixteen, the geeky little girl, so quiet, shy, and reserved, blossomed, just as her mother had at that age. But with this blossoming came a cold, hard edge to the young woman; one that would shape the next few decades of her life. After pick pocketing, trading, and other nefarious activities, Satine earned enough money to buy a machete. The kept it under her pillow for almost five night before her weekly visitors showed up…
…It was a quick, quiet fight. Satine killed the two with a cold, almost practiced ease.
Dedrick was outraged to lose his two favorite enforcers, and after about a month’s deliberation, he decided exactly how to deal with his daughter. He made a rather substantial donation to the orphanage with a few conditions: Satine be given her own room, and that the girl be let out every night into the care of her benefactor, no questions asked. The nuns were finding it increasingly hard to put food on the table, and though it might have been a sin, they turned Satine over without much fuss.
Almost every night, a car arrived for Satine, driving her to the night districts of Paris. There she was “leased” to bar owners and dancing houses as a serving girl/common whore. She tried to leave on one of these night trips, but Dedrick’s men caught up with her. They beat her nearly to death before dumping her at a hospital, saying only these words to her: “You’re not allowed to leave.”
At eighteen, when she was released from the care of the orphanage, she was taken in by one of her former leasers, one Madame Mimi, and given a job as entertainer and prostitute. Dedrick seemed content to leave her there – Mimi was almost as cruel as the old vampire. Satine received horrible psychological and physical abuse at the hands of her Mistress for the first few months, usually over her cold, chilly nature towards the patrons.
“You must flirt with everyone that comes through that door, Satine. Make them feel special, make them feel wanted.” Rap. Crack. And so, over the course of her time there, it was heavily ingrained into the young woman’s mind to flirt with everyone, a faucet of her personality she’s never been able to get away from – indeed, she’s still observed as flirting with most anyone she meets.
Arianne’s Legacy
Satine was approaching her thirtieth birthday when she met the first of many men that would change her life forever.
Mimi was beginning to fear that the bright, beautiful looks of her favored girl were going to start to dwindle as she aged, though, in all honesty, Satine had not seemed to age since coming to live with Madame full time. Mimi wondered at just what the girl was, but dismissed it – most brothels in Paris had long ago learned not to ask too many questions of their patrons or girls on their seeming inhuman heritage.
A young lawyer from a prestigious law firm in Paris became a frequent customer of Madame Mimi’s house, though he had never quite scraped up enough to buy the enchanting Satine for the night, instead settling with one of the lesser, slightly younger girls. But when his boss, a man by the name of Pierre Fournier, won the case of the century in France, the young man was determined to offer congratulations worthy of such a man. The entire firm bought out the brothel for one night, with the crown jewel of Mimi’s collection, Satine, especially bought for Pierre.
Pierre humored them all, and let the red head lead him back to her spacious rooms…
What really transpired behind those closed doors is anyone’s guess, but it did result in a very large check cut to Mimi for renovations and a new décor for Satine’s apartments, as well as ‘lessons’ in London from a Mistress Ravyn. Within a year, Satine had shed her name, most of her clientele, and part of her personality, giving way to the creature still known far and wide as Maîtresse Arianne, a professional dominatrix.
Pierre was still a patron of the woman until the day she left Paris, and it was this continued patronage that would sky rocket Arianne’s career into something remarkable. After a year, Mimi decided that this could really be a lucrative business, and began bringing in other girls to train under Satine, most notably Miss Jesekiah.
Losing Control
Mathieu’s Gift
Breaking the Chains of Subservience
True Calling?
Shattering the Bone
“I’m dead on the inside, and that fact bothers me…a little bit.”
- -Satine to Col. Marcus Drake
It was dizzying, the cycle of destruction that had started as soon as she joined the Foundation, spinning completely out of control until it had brought the woman to the point of wishing for death…praying and pleading for it from the hands of those she knew would give it to her. The monster, the woman, the creature…all fighting for dominance in her mind, struggling to survive in this world. True, she couldn’t feel a thing deep down, and that made it easier to swallow the job, to swallow the worries and concerns of others…But the fact was starting to get to her.
Increasing talks with Addramalech convinced the woman to loosen her grip on her morals, on her view of reality. To become what she feared she really was, to learn to deal with it, to use it…Little by little she began to push everyone away in order to create a bubble of solitude that would serve to keep people safe. Even now, while wrestling to embrace her darkness, she still only wanted to protect those she cared for; they were all she had in this world.
It was a paradox that was shaking her to the core.
This was not helped by a sudden, if small, resurgence of feeling. Feeling that was like the wedge driving her apart – Adam seemed to only bring out the best in the woman, but every time they parted, it was another blow. Numerous times she asked for both Adam and Nick to pull the trigger, to stop her from this downhill slide – she could see clearly where it was headed. Right into the arms of becoming the White Queen.
Nick wouldn’t do it. He still believed she could be salvaged, given the opportunity, the right placement of force and persuasion…He brought her to see a Paladin in an attempt to help heal the wounds that scarred her soul. Satine let the woman in, let her see the largest and deepest wounds. But Satine, due to simple denial and a vampiric mind block, refused to see the truth of the memory – that her mother had loved her. Frustrated, he took advantage of her liking of him and tranquilized her, dragging her off to the care of two psychics – Joshua Keyes and Chloe DeBeauchamp with the order to make her see the truth, and to basically fix her damaged psyche.
For a bone that never set properly has to be broken again to heal, does it not?
It amounted to psychic rape – an entry that Satine did not want, to provide help she didn’t think she needed. The two psions managed to break her down, and just as they were attempting to start putting the pieces together…they slipped. The beast that lived in her head took her chance, and managed to send the mind into a cataclysmic hurricane. The lies were broken, the heart revealed…
It hit Satine like a freight train. Nearly forty years of raw emotions experienced but never processed were forced upon her all at once…Nightmares, terrors, all relived in a single blink of an eye, felt for the first time in the pit of her soul. Nothing the other two could do – Keyes attempted to try and filter the emotions through himself, but the damage was done.
The huge ball of psychic energies that had been unbound threatened to explode, meaning the death not only of Satine, but everyone within a football field radius.
A touch. Chloe reached out to her…
It sparked something in Satine. The urge to protect others. Even if these others were people she’d never met before…People that had violated her mind very deeply…She did the only thing she could do to save their lives – she shredded her own mind viciously after pushing them out.
The result is a woman mentally shattered, and trying to pick up the pieces. She refuses to let anyone back in her head, using her thick mental fog as a means of shielding. In the very center what’s left of sanity sits, sorting through everything, trying to process all the information. To the outside world, she presents an almost bi-polar personality – one sane, if wounded, the other completely insane.
It’s a healing process long over due for Satine, but it seems to come at the worst possible time – death threatens them all on the horizon.
Depths of Devotion
It also seems that her ties with and her loyalty to Ascension Foundation have sky rocketed. She’s been seen spending large amounts of time with Adam, but what they do or discuss, Satine will not say. But there is a fervor in her eyes now, a fire that burns through the insanity, the pain, the despair…Everything.
It seems also that as apart of her talks with the man, she’s been seen in Paragon City flashing a badge and asking questions. Seems the FBI stole her away from Arachnos to investigate odd disturbances, most likely due to her psychic talents. When asked about it, she doesn’t say much. '
"Christ, Adam, they shoved me into a spandex suit. And I thought the Spiders were bad with their Widow get ups...I'm going to go cut myself out of it now."
- - A text message sent to Adam shortly after receiving her "cape".
