ANASTASIA ATHANASIOU the malkavian doomsayer, vtm: sins of the sires (x.x.x)
hey there to my future self, if you forget how to smile, i have this to tell you. remember it once in a while. ten years ago your past self prayed for your happiness. please don’t lose hope.
There's a new VTM game coming out at the end of the month, so you know what that means...
It's time for another vampire OC! Introducing: Timothea Andreas. Spoilers for the demo.
Thea was a single mother raising her daughter alongside her best friend when she was Embraced. Given that the game says you can "become" certain clans even though the demo explicitly says you're Caitiff, I'm guessing your Discipline choices inform what clan you end up being, so until the game Josses it I'm saying she's Malkavian. Especially since if you pick Auspex first, the game basically describes something happening to you that sounds a LOT like the Cobweb.
Her derangement is Unconscious Thought Reading. Her Auspex is much stronger than her Obfuscate and Dominate. I might give her pure-O to fit with traditional Malkiness, not sure yet.
She becomes quite in tune with the Cobweb once she's settled into Kindred life. Sometimes she'll just sit on a doorstep or something and listen to the other Malkavians, or see through their eyes, and give them commentary or advice, like they do to her. It is the Cobweb that taught her that she was Malkavian, and the Cobweb that often gives her guidance and advice -- and sometimes the Cobweb that tries to trick her although, the Cobweb being what it is, it doesn't take her long to figure out which voices she can and can't trust.
Provided Markos doesn't know who her sire is (maybe he does and that's why he's so damn nice to you), it actually takes him a fair bit of time to catch on that she's Malkavian. She doesn't tell him about the voices because she's not 100% sure in the beginning if that's normal or not and doesn't want to get treated like a freak by other vamps if it's not (and she soon figures out it's not).
Another thing her Malkiness does is give her insight she doesn't realise she had. She often just knows things, and doesn't realise she didn't learn it the normal way. Like she might tell you that Bob goes to the pub every Thursday at 8, but if you asked her how she knew that, she wouldn't be able to tell you. Because of this, Markos spends a while thinking that she's getting up to things she shouldn't behind his back, and has her tailed for a while, but nothing ever turns up.
Thea is a bit like Maddy in that she hears voices due to the Unconscious Thought Reading derangement. Unlike Maddy her voices are almost always the words of what someone else is thinking or saying, whether it's another Malkavian on the Cobweb or reading someone's mind. If someone thinks "at" her (eg she pisses someone off and they think "go to hell" at her), she can hear it as if it was spoken aloud. Distance dilutes this, but if someone's experiencing strong emotions when they're thinking "at" her (eg they're in danger and are begging her to save them), she can pick it up from across a city.
What tips Markos off though is the mindreading thing; if she's looking away from someone she cannot tell the difference between when they're thinking at her, and when they're actually talking to her. So this led to her responding to them at inappropriate times, or not responding at all, depending on whether she thought they spoke aloud or didn't. At first he and Persa just thought she was very good at predicting what they were about to say, or wanted to say, but then she started referring to thoughts he'd had about things he knew, for a fact, he'd never spoken to her aloud about. So he does a bit of research and he's like... "yup, I have a Malk on my hands."
of course that's all irrelevant if it turns out that Markos actually DOES know who your sire and what your clan is
And of course, she has the canonical visions. She's basically a psychic on crack cocaine.
Like Maddy her Malkiness gets worse when she's tired or hungry; the Cobweb gets much louder, and it's easier for her to pick up on other people's thoughts even when they're not thinking at her, leading to sensory overload.
She is convinced her sire will come back for her one night. This isn't her being hopeful; if anything, she's nervous and doesn't know if his return would be good or bad for her (she suspects the latter). This isn't insight either, she just thinks, "okay, why would you Embrace someone, feed them, and just fuck off unless you meant to all along? And why would you mean to do that unless it was part of some bigger plan?" She knows she didn't do anything to make her sire reject her because he didn't even have time to see anything he didn't like.
So yeah, she is pretty sure he'll come back one night. She just doesn't know what will follow when he does...
A commission done by @ sunae for my Tremere PC Areti and Markos in this scene!
I've dreamed about this scene day and night and now it comes true! Don't you think it's like a little adopted puppy and her owner🥺confessions...but I love this
