#codex: sol

[luciacaminoz]

good use of my time

[luciacaminoz]

CODEX ENTRY

SOLONA "SOL" CASTILLO Caitiff • Courier • Catalyst

“[…] exists in the liminal between monster and martyr.”

IDENTITY Name: Solona María Alejandra Castillo

Aliases: “Sol” (most common), "Soledad" (courier alias; Camarilla dossiers; later by Nuevo León’s and the greater Gulf's crime syndicates and Kindred circuits), "Soli" (family; childhood nickname), "Lady Selene" (Julian's LiveJournal fanfics) Clan: Caitiff (botched Embrace; presumed Banu Haqim) Generation: 11th -> 9th by 2020 (post-diablerie and 2100X vitae infusion) Sire: Julian Sim (Banu Haqim) Birthdate: November 1st, 1974 (Scorpio sun, Cancer moon, Pisces rising) Embraced: November 2nd, 2000 (age 26, Sierra Vista, AZ) Humanity: 6

PHYSICAL PROFILE Height: 5’7 | Weight: 130 lbs Appearance: Asian/Hispanic female. A study in contrasts—delicate bone structure, thick brows, rounded full lips. Almond eyes, densely lashed and restless. Scar tissue a silver slice from left oral commissure to earlobe (timing belt snap at 17). Build: Hourglass; fleshy curves with coltish limbs—feminine, lithe and capable. Walks with a lazy, hip-first sway. Skin: Medium tan olive skin: deeper/healthier undertones with Blush of Life active; slightly greyer, washed-out complexion otherwise. Hair: Espresso-dark, waist-length waves; often tied back with gold wire, beads, stolen Panda Express chopsticks, in a messy or braided ponytail, baby hairs wild or strategically framing her face. Eyes: Cajeta in crude oil—that final shade of brown before all light’s swallowed by black hole. Voice: Husky contralto. Sandoval-family Spanish-soft lilt, Sonoran cadence. Laugh is rare, disarming, warm.

Distinguishing Marks:

Tattoos: Scorpion (right hand), kingsnake (left ankle), twin hummingbirds (left hip), Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (full back mural). Various smaller tattoos and stick-and-pokes all over.

Moles: Scattered. Concentrated clusters on neck, breast, and shoulder.

Scent & Blood Profile: Burning mesquite, sage, cacao, offset with chamoy and tamarind tang.

Style: Desert punk, apocalypse saint — thrifted slip dresses, mutilated band tees, tiny camisoles and bandeaus, oversized jackets. Baggy or low-rise jeans, cutoff shorts. Last-legs denim and beaten-soft leather. Matte blacks, stark whites, warm earth tones: dried blood red, ochre, rust, sienna. Safety pin mods, bandanas, citrine studs and turquoise beads sewn throughout; rosaries repurposed as anklets. Favors sneakers, lace-up combat boots; strappy sandals and metallic accents on more formal occasions.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE MBTI: INFJ Enneagram: Type 4w5 Fatal Flaw: Loyalty above self-preservation Core Fear: Fundamentally worthless/useless Core Desire: To feel real (to herself, which she often mistakes for feeling needed/wanted/put to use by others) Vice: Self-Sacrifice Virtue: Empathy Concept: The Martyr Who Bites/The Scorpion Saint — bleeding heart wrapped in barbed wire, equal parts ghost and hurricane. The wound (loneliness and longing) as an entity. Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Key Traits:

Empath (derogatory): Reads rooms like a bloodhound, absorbs pain (voluntary or not). Not above using human fragility (wants, fears, darker desires) for gain; can backfire or become overwhelmed when a trigger is present.

Self-Loathing: But resilient; trying not to make a big deal of it.

Haunting Vulnerability: Projects an aura of quiet, tragic beauty behind the stoicism.

Nurturer: Instinctively gentle with children, animals, broken things. Watches out for women at truck-stops, diners, gas stations, clubs; those who are lost; those working long nights alone.

Twisted Sensuality: Sex > or = communication. Will use sex as both weapon and comfort; a way to ground or to escape; deflect or emphasize.

Protective Fury: Will eviscerate anyone and anything (including the Masquerade) threatening her very few loved ones.

Beast Resonance: Inland Taipan (lethal precision) × Solifugae (desert hunger) × Arizona Bark Scorpion (deceptively strong venom).

*Manifests when Protean is in use as slit pupils, lightened irises, extended fangs, unnerving stillness.

Predator Type: Siren (sometimes suppressed)

Preferred Vessels: Construction workers, single fathers, anyone with over-clocked minds, calloused hands, in need of release, etc. Not a strict preference, however.

Method: Seductive predation (“I’ll make it good for you”) followed on occasion by post-feed guilt-vomiting.

Blood Resonance: Melancholic (frequent), Choleric (from Julian), Sanguine (from Ryan).

Mental Health: Depression, depersonalization and chronic dissociation made worse after Aila’s diablerie and Julian’s abandonment. Developed Bulimic derangement due to intense trauma of blood bond breaking down.

SKILLSET & DISCIPLINES

Disciplines:

Blood Sorcery: (butcher-shopped and jury-rigged from Julian’s initial schooling. Cruder than Banu Haqim or Tremere techniques but brutally efficient.)

Dust to Dust: Blood/vitae siphon.

Crimson Lasso: Razor-wire whips of congealed vitae.

Veil of María: Illusions woven from heat-haze and opponent blood loss.

Protean: (self-manifested, self-taught. Lettow imparts some teaching during the events of Night Road.)

Feral Weapons: Claws distend, fangs elongate (4”, curved), able to unhinge jaw like a serpent.

Scorpion’s Touch/Kodoku: Blackened talons that secrete paralytic venom (duration: 10 mins, Sorcery Combo).

Earth Meld: Limited to sinking into sand/loose soil.

Celerity: (Julian’s tutelage in Monterrey, post-Night Road. Utterly rudimentary—nothing flashy. Yet.)

Skills:

Mechanical Prodigy: Hotwires most cars in 8.3 seconds. Anything pre-2020 <15 seconds. Engine whisperer. Favors muscle cars, JDMs, motorcycles.

Courier: Knows every backroad from Tucson to Tijuana.

Getaway Driver: Speeds and drifts like a wraith. Offensive and defensive maneuvers.

Languages: Fluent Spanish, English; rusty Tagalog.

Streetwise: Subtle and lowkey, with high wits and composure. Competently navigates cop checkpoints and hunter cells; gang, cartel and certain Anarch territories.

Weaknesses:

Guilt: Under/Overfeeds, self-flagellates, hesitates mid-fight, leaves survivors.

Mortal Melancholy: Overcompensates with Blush of Life during sex/feeding. Stares at couples and families. Hoards Ryan's pictures of sunsets and his nieces' crayon masterpieces.

Dyslexic: Shies away from text communication and academics, tries to memorize everything including maps and operating systems.

Restlessness: Russian nesting doll of sadness wrapped in horny, wrapped in 'I can fix him', wrapped in 'Fuck it', and prone to paranoid and Fugue states. And wrapped in more horny.

Triggers: Julian’s “Solona”’s, Aila's stirring, children, migrants, girls with a familiar hollowness. Ryan's tenderness, specifically.

BIOGRAPHY Early Life (1974-2000): Born in Soledad, CA, to a Mexican mechanic (Javier Castillo) and Filipina seamstress (Luningning “Lu” Reyes). Older brother Tiago (Los Zetas enforcer) taught her to throw punches, change oil, hide bodies. Moved to Sierra Vista, AZ, at 8. Dropped out of high school at 16. Worked dad’s garage nights, toyed with community college, dated town bad boys, miscarried at 22. Ultimately directionless. Embraced by Julian at 26.

Fledgling Years (2000-2010): Julian’s shadow, best friend, lover, partner-in-crime. Camarilla wetwork: border ops, hits, drops, clean ups. Diablerized Aila (2010). Julian abandoned her a month later.

Wilderness Years (2010-2017): Independent courier gigs, smuggling, trafficking, gun-running. Crying in truck-stop showers; learning to control purging episodes after feeding. Restricted to bagged blood.

Alternate Universe (2018+): Tremere fetter analysis delayed, awaiting further instruction before making return trip to Texas state; granted temporary hospitality in Miami. Subsequently tangled in Chantry bullshit, Gulf drug and gun trade, and the political chess courtesy of a Lasombra rolling in. Also: Ryan Donahue.

Night Road & Beyond (2021+): Reunited with Julian. 2100X catalyst. Infiltrated Viper Club, retrieved Beckoning data, destabilized Second Inquisition’s presence in Southern AZ (for now). Main Mission Objective: Sabbat death cult in Monterrey. Side Mission Objective: Who the fuck took that shot.

Affiliations: Julian Sim & 2100X; Independent (ex-Camarilla-adjacent) courier; Ricardo 'Ric' Lorenz's Miami heist crew (by extension of Ryan Donahue).

[luciacaminoz]

Unprompted Sol questions:

1. Does she think much on the way that access to certain Disciplines have changed hers (or Julian's for that matter) psychology?

2. Is there any Discipline that she would deliberately avoid learning? Or does she embrace the Caitiff switchblade approach?

I LOVE YOU….THANK YOU

1. Does she think much on the way that access to certain Disciplines have changed hers (or Julian’s for that matter) psychology?

She thinks about it the way she thinks about her scar, which is to say: not constantly, and not necessarily analytically, but you bump it wrong and you’re reminded of the very ugly, very painful reality of what’s knotted underneath.

Sol’s understanding of most things is somatic. I can’t imagine she’d ever have the luxury of metacognitive distance Julian might bring—at least not for another century or so. She doesn’t intellectualize and certainly doesn’t possess the academic vocabulary he’d use to articulate it. Julian could probably pull a mini lecture out of his ass on psychological ramifications of supernatural capability on the formation of post-human identity, and it’d be tongue-in-cheek brilliant like his scurvy victim comparison in pre-Night Road flashbacks, but ultimately miss the point—because words are just words. Sol lives everything at nerve level.

Saying that, to get a little Meta™️, Protean is the one that fucks with her the most, being that it wasn’t inherited and it confirmed her Caitiff status. Julian initially honed her Blood Sorcery—Parent Clan Discipline; here’s the theory, here’s the mechanism, now replicate, and that came easy because shared-Blood affinity.

Protean, however, crawled out of her during that first year as if it had always been waiting. Like an admission. That distinction matters.

She’s aware—in the body-knowledge way she processes most things—that Protean changes how she occupies space even when it’s dormant. The stillness that unsettles people. Slit pupils and lightened irises she has to consciously suppress at times, even with Blush of Life already active. It’s more than her Beast—or maybe it’s simply closer to it: inland taipan, scorpion, solifugae; those patient, starving desert things.

And yeah—she’s noticed it in Julian too, though she’d frame it a little differently. She didn’t know him prior to his Embrace, of course, but they were attached at the hip for a decade after hers. When they’d met he’d only been 5 years dead and had spent most of that time arguing semantics with his sire before finally fucking off on his own. Brand new to the West, to America, the Camarilla, just finding his feet. Comparing that Julian to 2020 Julian…

Obfuscate surely didn’t make him a liar, but I think it refined the architecture. Gave the instinct toward manipulation and disappearance a supernatural toolkit/panic button. If he can rewrite what you see when you look at him—how many layers of that eventually seep inward? It makes sense, in my opinion, considering this metastasizing need to pathologically control narratives. Likewise, Celerity didn’t make him flighty—but it lets him leave before consequences land, and that also tracks, doesn’t it? That’s Julian all over. In, out, be somewhere else before impact. Laugh about it.

2. Is there any Discipline that she would deliberately avoid learning? Or does she embrace the full Caitiff switchblade approach?

Switchblade, absolutely. But with tiny caveats :P

Sol’s Caitiff status is the thing she’s both most ashamed of and quietly proud of. Her arsenal—Blood Sorcery butchered beyond Julian’s teaching, Protean writhing up from whatever’s in her marrow, Celerity just barely sketched on Monterrey’s skyline—is hers the way a shiv made from a toothbrush handle is yours. It’s intimate.

If something presents itself—if her Blood reaches for a new shape—she’s not going to refuse it out of squeamishness. You don’t get to be picky when you’re scavenging from stolen parts and instinct. (Though her broke-ass would rather money if someone’s offering.)

That said…

Dominate would probably give her most pause in her present state of mind. It’s not something she’d seek out, which is NOT a rational tactical decision—Dominate would be enormously useful for a courier, and she wouldn’t be nearly as hung up about it pre-2010. But I think she’s been on the receiving end of too many things that obliterated her (already fragile) sense of self: dying, luring her own people to an Elder under the Camarilla’s leash; ten years of being directed—subtly, lovingly, but directed—into becoming the instrument of Julian’s vision; diablerie; a dangerously debilitating and humiliating derangement; and another ten years of Aila in the back of her skull, to just top-down command someone’s will like it’s nothing.

There’s a practical layer too because even as a Caitiff, I don’t think Dominate would likely self-manifest and Sol would never easily master it. To me, it requires a kind of cold authority she (including her Beast) just doesn’t project. Sol’s a bottom-up operator LMAO.

There’s also something about Auspex that makes her wary (and even more weary 🫩), though she will suspect it’s nascent by late 2021 anyway, fed slowly by her synesthesia and neuroses. The idea of perceiving more beyond what she could with Aila—auras, psychic impressions, the emotional residue of spaces and others—sounds like a sensory overload nightmare for someone who chronically dissociates under stress. Sol’s relationship with her own perception is adversarial enough; you’re handing someone drowning an anvil if you add another channel of input... (………….EVIL CREATOR GRIN)

But she can’t refuse it if it comes. That’s the Clanless deal, more so than most Kindred. In the margins, you just try to survive whatever blooms.

(Obviously people can interpret it and play how they want in terms of curating their Caitiff character’s setup, but I really like the idea that with Caitiff, maybe Disciplines develop in the negatives. You’ve got all the hardware and software, unlike Thinbloods, and you’re inherently jailbroken, but you don’t exactly have any built-in programs/instructions/guidance/manuals, etc. It’s fun to think about all the latent psychic damage that was already there as a mortal, or amplified in undeath, beginning to render in high contrast as years pass… Kind of adds to the horror)

[luciacaminoz]

bebé sol..

[luciacaminoz]

VTM OC WARDROBE:

S O L E D A D

Clan: Caitiff

Humanity: 6

Generation: 10th (through diablerie and synthetic vitae)

Favorite Discipline: Protean (it’s so close; Sol finds Blood Sorcery extremely interesting and is very good at it, but I think if she was honest with herself she has more fun with Protean — just doesn’t like the implications of admitting that. She uses both in conjunction often though. Blorcean…)

bonus shit:

was tagged by @informaltorching & @batsu4eva thank you guys <333

idk who has been tagged already im kinda late to this but whoever reading rn with vtm ocs @silkenred @witchknightblack @gauntlings

@ustalav @lazareneblessing @baelavelaryon come to mind ^^

[luciacaminoz]

nine images that capture your OC's vibe: "S O L E D A D"

tagged by @informaltorching ty jax!!

ill tag @girlnextvore @devilbrakers @silkenred

@dietgabbana @gauntlings @witchknightblack and any other oc heads, no pressure ofc <3

[luciacaminoz]

1 14 24 for sol 👀

1 answered here ^^

14. If they send nudes, are they tasteful or just quick pics?

SOL

Sol's sensuality is overwhelmingly tactile. Why send a picture when she could just ambush Julian? But if he was away on a solo op and she was feeling impulsive (or bored, or lonely, or that specific cocktail of horny-sad), she'd send something deliberate. Not posed or curated exactly. Suggestively considered?

Grainy flip-phone quality: curves catching lamplight, face cropped above her mouth. Sort of the visual equivalent of her voice when she's halfway to torpor and just wants him to stop what he’s doing and come die in her arms 🤦‍♀️

JULIAN (im sorry i had to do it for him too)

Little bit unhinged about this.

He's the guy who thinks he's above it and then proceeds to send the most elaborately lit, borderline art-directed thirst traps known to Kindred with zero warning, often at catastrophically inappropriate times, always with an element of absurdity that somehow makes them hotter. “Testing camera features." Spends twenty minutes adjusting the angle and lighting. Deletes forty takes before landing on something acceptably "casual." Mirror selfie, fresh out of the shower, not entirely censored by a strategically placed Gundam model. Caption: "thoughts?"

Immediately triple-texts something work related after :P

He oscillates between shitpost and sincere with no discernible pattern and the whiplash is intentional. Keeps her guessing.

Early pre-2010 he was shyer—would let Sol coax images out of him, usually awkward angles and slightly nervous energy. Pics where you can almost hear him saying "this is stupid, right? Is this stupid?”

Post-2020 is very careful even after Night Road. Aware she might not want them. Trying to let her lead both on ops and within their relationship. Lots of variables to take into account when gauging if it’ll go over well.

24. A song they would fuck/get fucked to

SOL

MANY SONGS but that’s a cop-out so: nostalgic cuts and slow burns. Anything that sounds like chasing, dragging or drowning feels especially right to her. She was a 90s teen/YA, worked overnight alone in Castillo’s Auto Repair at the edge of town. Deftones, Portishead, Aaliyah, Sade and the whole grunge movement was where the magic was for her before the Embrace. Notably though:

Portishead's Wandering Star. Pre-2010, this might’ve played in the trailer when the desert outside was a black void and Julian's monitor was the only light, and Sol would climb into his lap to make him stop working. She associates it with being new

Deftones' Digital Bath—water imagery, synth haze, sparking electric riff. It's all contradictions: delicate and crushing, intimate and dissociative. Collision point. This is desperation music. The kind of sex where you're trying to open someone up, crawl inside and make a home. Sol goes soft, pliant, letting Julian lead. Julian goes quiet—less performance, more presence. Foreheads pressed together

Another easy pick is Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)—trapped ache and distance, hovering somewhere between plea and that pre-Embrace resignation; then guitars that swell like heat mirages, Sierra Vista finally in the rearview. It's a driving song and Sol fucks like she drives: focused, fluid, reckless when she trusts the vehicle 🤫

[luciacaminoz]

18 for Sol and Julian 😌

18. Their favorite actions during sex—chin-grabbing, hair-pulling, wrists being pinned, etc.

SOL

The oral fixation and need to consume predates the fangs ☝️

Grazing skin and tendons. Testing give. She likes her mouth on things: Julian's throat, the ridge of his Adam's apple beneath her tongue; his earlobe, cool metal piercings caught between her teeth. Her lips around those clever fingers. She'll bite his shoulder, the meat of his palm, suck bruises into pale inner thighs. Lamprey shit. That line between feeding and fucking blurs for Kindred and Sol likes dancing on it, likes feeling him tense beneath her. The restraint is its own intimacy. It’s less about marking territory (though there's that) and more grounding through taste, texture. I’ve mentioned before she has mild synesthesia which is why I’ve used a lot of heightened sensory language in past fics adjacent to her POV.

(Tangent but as a Caitiff I think this could lend itself to Auspex slowly manifesting over the next decade or two. Protean/Blood Sorcery/Celerity/Auspex is a kind of bizarre arsenal but very neat to me LOL. I like that the two Banu Haqim parent-clan Disciplines were taught by Julian and the two wildcard Disciplines are really intrinsic to Sol herself as a character)

Hair-pulling, either being pulled or doing the pulling. A sharp tug at her scalp resets something in her janky nervous system, yanks her back into her body. Julian figured this out early; learned exactly how hard, exactly where. The base of her skull. A fistful of thick waves twisted once, twice. Sol of course loves ruining his meticulously styled hair—get fucked nerd

She likes weight and pressure in any configuration when she’s spiralling. Claustrophobic comfort and lizard-brain reassurance that something solid exists and she's underneath it

Claws are complicated. Pre-2010, she'd retract them religiously if they slipped out, terrified of hurting him. Now they’ll rake ribs and draw vitae when arguments devolve into something else and they both get off on it🙄

Loves/hates when Julian cups her face and forces eye contact. It's unbearable and necessary in equal measure. His mouth or thumb tracing the scar from the corner of her lips to just below her ear while he’s inside

JULIAN

Methodical fucker. (Literally.) Extremely cerebral: novelty, sensation, reaction.

His thing is deliberate overstimulation—holding Sol exactly at the edge, adjusting angles with algorithmic precision until she's nonverbal and forgetting she's supposed to be mad at him. He likes directing—not dominating, but orchestrating. It's about knowing her—better than anyone—and proving it to her each time: I know exactly how to take you apart and put you back together. Observation feeds experimentation feeds mastery feeds genuine care he's not always comfortable naming. Touch is gathering intel. Every twitch catalogued, every response pattern mapped. The data is beautiful to him which sounds clinical, and it can be, but it’s also devastatingly attentive. She makes sounds like that when I do this; I want her to make that sound forever.

Chin-grabbing when she won't look at him. Post-2020 this becomes reflexive—Sol's tendency to disappear into memory drives him more than a little crazy. It’s frustrating when he’s trying to look forward—to the future—for them. Firm fingers catching her jaw, thumb brushing her scar. “Solona."

Loves Sol's nails down his back/ribs/scalp. Pre-2010 it was playful; post-2020 she makes him bleed and he's into it in ways that are concerning but otherwise left unexamined. Julian himself just thinks she's very hot when she's feral, but it’s genuinely arousing/exciting to provoke her Beast. His Beast is weaving whole crazy ass mind-game obstacle courses for her Beast. He truly gets off on that liminal space and stimulation between trust and threat. (ARGH HE’S SO INTERESTING TO MEEEEE. I could talk about this clown forever sorry)

Thigh-spreading — hands on the inside of Sol's knees, inching them apart. It's the deliberateness. The way she lets him—still lets him—arrange her

Dirty talk. Julian cannot shut the fuck up

His actual favorite, if he's being honest with himself: Sol initiating and taking charge. Her interrupting, demanding attention. Being wanted badly enough that she can't wait. Pre-2010 this happened constantly. Post-2020 it's rare, which makes it feel like a minor miracle he gives into immediately, even if it means more work for him later

BOTH

Foreheads pressed together, sharing stillborn air—before, during, after

Pinning or being pinned. Depends on the night. It’s switch city over here lol

Vitae exchange during—not always full feeding, but ambient bloodplay. The bond's been unevenly formed, now violently fractured. What lingers is scar tissue. Each taste going forward reaffirms betrayal and connection and still somehow feels like home

(To me, pre-2010 they were learning a language neither spoke natively. Dead bodies. Clumsy fangs. Accidental claw-marks. Horrific but weirdly sweet

Post-2020 is archaeological. Playful intimacy is loaded with ghosts and ten years of static, but it resurfaces in fits and starts—Julian making dumb jokes to break tension, Sol's laugh against his neck. Underneath it all: is this the last time? Are we fixing anything or just digging around a bullet?)