Cassandra Palmer

Player Name: Emily
Player E-mail: allthatglittersnstuff@gmail.com
Instant message contact (AIM): allthatglittersnstuff
Plurk (if applicable): riddlesinthedark
Is the player at least 18 years of age? Yes

Character's Full Name: Cassandra Palmer
Canon The Cassandra Palmer Series
PB/Actor: Britt Robertson
Character's Starting Level: 4? Open to being flexible about that.
Character Age: 24
Physical Description: She's blonde with blue eyes, standing about 5'3" although she normally wears heels. Athletic build due to her years on the run and needing to be in good shape. She normally has a tattoo on her upper back of a lopsided pentagram that's actually a ward, though she'll be arriving without it. She also has Mircea's mark on her neck, something that technically symbolizes their marriage in the vamp world... Not that she's supportive of that at all because she definitely didn't agree to it. She also has a jagged scar on her stomach from an incubus trying to literally eat her alive.


Character's Species/Race (aka human, elf, dragonblood human, etc): Human - Arcane Spellcaster Class

Character History (Pre-Veil): Wiki link 1 and Wiki link 2. I also have a start of a more in-depth history here for her.

Post Veil History:

She'd managed to save Vegas and consequently the world, vaguely remembering watching demons destroy Apollo, various colored handcuffs, a coronation, and Dee going on a shopping trip while she told Mircea she'd pay him back. There'd been a betrayal, death, and pain. But it was all jumbled. The street around her was packed with both the living and the dead, all going about their business and few actually bothering to stop long enough to look her over. She'd arrived without her ward, in shorts and a t-shirt - vastly under-prepared for whatever this was.

This wasn't the first time she'd found herself in an awkward situation, at least from what she could remember. She'd made quick work of it, getting a bartending job that worked with her current wardrobe after improving the look with heels instead of her tennis because she wasn't interested in dealing with homelessness or shelters again if she could help it. A perk of landing in Las Vegas, even if it wasn't exactly the one she was used to, was that finding a job would be pretty easy given her background and taste for the more eclectic. One of the girls behind the bar took her in and lent her some clothes while she got on her feet, apparently not the first time she'd done that.

After a few months, she'd made a few associations around town with some of the ghosts and things had stayed pretty quiet. At least until she got hit with a pretty graphic vision. People dying, but not by regular means. They'd been sent to Vegas to retrieve something, but there was an ambush waiting for them. It's one of the few times she actually makes it in time to deliver the warning, having sent a few ghosts to double check the ambush point to see if there were actually people waiting. It takes some convincing, but they believed her and convinced her to come back with them and that was that.

Chosen Canon Point: End of Book 4: Curse the Dawn after she has a serious talk with Mircea and Pritkin storms in to complain about her having shaved his legs while in his body.

Personality and Psychology:

"All I See is the kind of stuff that nightmares
and serious drinking problems are made of."

Cassie, in a word, is weird. She never asked for most of the crap that landed in her lap and yet she found a way to get through it and accept herself for what she was. Mostly. Thinking outside of the box isn't too much to ask when it came to Cassie considering she'd been able to see and interact with ghosts from a very young age - a gift she inherited from her father. She was also raised at a Vampire's court, the vampire being her parent’s Boss, due to being orphaned at 4. It helped her find ways to not question what was in front of her, to just accept it and move on. That aspect of herself translates fairly well into adulthood as things continued to get crazier for her.

She's also very much a reluctant hero. She'd found a way to accept and work around the beginning of her powers, but with every new thing landing on her shoulders, it gets harder. It doesn't stop her from adjusting, though, and adapting to the new situations. She's very quick on her feet, something that's helped her stay alive this long. She trusts her instincts and does her best to roll with the punches when they land. Because of this, she does have a bit of a wall built up around her. It's hard to get close to her, actually close, because she's learned through life experiences that people close to her tend to get hurt. However, on the flipside of that, people she lets in and trusts are people she will be loyal to until the end. Or until they screw her over.

Her number of enemies definitely outweighs people she willingly slaps the label friend on, especially after she came into the Pythia powers. Of course, she didn't just magically get a negative following by breathing. Something she excels at is pissing people off who pissed her off first. When Cassie had turned 14, she received her full powers as a Clairvoyant, meaning she learned the truth about her guardian killing her parents so he could use her and control her. The only reason Cassie had returned after running away the first time was to bring him down, to try and get justice for her parents and payback for Tony using her and her powers through legal channels rather than turning to Vamp law. Cassie had become a snitch for the FBI to try and bring Tony's illegal empire down, one she'd inadvertently helped build through her visions. Tony had lied to her though, a stupid choice on his part.

There are very few things that get Cassie really worked up and those include being lied to and someone betraying her trust. In her life before taking the Chief Seer office, the only people she really trusted 100% were already dead. Ghosts, one in particular named Billy Joe, were her network to stay safe and a means of self-defense. There are very few non-ghosts in her trusted circle she genuinely trusts, and even that tends to be fluid based on circumstances. Paranoia tends to be a default setting for her, along with generally being cautious. It's something that comes with being on the run, that need to look over her shoulder and question the intentions everyone she meets. With that, she doesn't tend to let people in, which means she's usually alone. It's easier to run without making lasting ties, just like it's easier to not be betrayed by someone who can't be whammied by a Master Vamp to spill their deepest secrets. At the end of the day, though, she's still human (as far as she knows) and has desires and longings just like everyone else. It helped when the few people she was closest to kind of bulldozed their way into her life and stuck around despite her best efforts to get them to leave.

"I’d learned not to want things, not to try to hold on to anything, because if I
got used to it being there, it would be that much harder when I had to let it go.
I’d watched person after person with paranoid eyes, keeping them all
— potential friends, enemies, lovers —
at a safe, painful distance. And all the while, the hunger grew, for someone who would stay,
someone permanent, someone mine."

That all being said, she does grow throughout the books when it comes to letting people in and trusting them. With her title came a need for additional safety measures, keeping herself alive a hell of a lot harder than before. When she gives her trust, it's 100%. She's loyal to a fault, one of the many reasons why betrayal stings so much. Cassie has learned the hard way that life has a tendency to be too short and there's really no reason to keep opinions to herself. She's bold and speaks her mind to pretty much anyone. There are very few cases where she won't, but even when dealing with Master Level Vampires that are pretty high up on the food chain or mages that could kill her with a look she doesn't hold her tongue. Especially if it's a direct dig against her. It's taken a little while, but at this point in her life, she's pretty certain of who she is as a person, even if her powers keep changing around her. Eugenie had worked hard as her nanny to make sure she was confident and self-assured. With that in mind, she also tends to let her emotions go a step ahead of logic, which does nothing to stop the usually inappropriate word vomit - especially when enhanced with exhaustion.

While she may not always make the smartest moves with her mouth, she's pretty quick on her feet - both physically and intellectually. Sometimes it balances out when it comes to keeping herself alive, especially once she received her Pythia powers. There wasn't a formal training period, so it was basically sink or swim.

"For what it's worth, Cassie. I'm sorry.
There hasn't been a Pythia since the first one that has had
to take on the job completely untrained. But then, with your
abilities, you're likely to rewrite the rule book anyways...
Plus, most of our adepts take years to learn what you've
managed to teach yourself in only a few days."

Cassie is incredibly independent when she's allowed, and sometimes even when she's not. She knows what she wants and if she has no idea how to get it, she'll fake it until something pops up. Something that spurs her almost need to be independent is how long she spent under someone else's thumb and how the Pythia power seems to want to put her back in an old position. She was used by Tony and had to deal with a few other contenders vying for her once she received the full powers - only desire really to keep her in their pocket. One of the reasons she's such a unique Pythia is because she hadn't been raised by the Silver Circle, so there wasn't any brainwashing from early on about following their every command. And it wasn't something she was about to start following just because she was holding a new office.

She doesn't take everything that happens to her as completely bad and let it weigh her down. Every situation is a learning opportunity, one in which she can basically just be a creeper and make mental notes on people. What makes them tick, what they might be hiding (something that is helpful with having ghostly friends), and whether or not their intentions towards her are good or bad. That last one doesn't always require the power of observation given the amount of times people try to kill her on a regular basis.

"...I saw you tonight, Pritkin. Until the Black Circle got involved,
you were having a good time and you know it. Don’t give me that self-defense crap.
You’re a predator. I grew up around enough to know."

Memories Retained or Lost:

Remembers:

→ Vague details and people from her life
➝ The words geis and dulceata, but no specifics about it
➝ Flashes of Mircea from the 1800s and a red shoe, her childhood, and in front of a fireplace with wine
➝ Something about Mircea and a bathrobe
➝ Parts of her hook-ups with Pritkin and being on the run with him
➝ Being attacked by an incubus, although not the details on who
➝ Rafe's angel paintings on the ceiling of her room as a kid
➝ Her parent's deaths in the car bomb, but not who did it
➝ Finding Eugenie's Body
➝ Mac's Death
➝ Apollo's destruction
➝ Sensations such as sudden chills, energy drains, drowning, a heavy weight around her neck, being torn apart from the inside out.
➝ Minimal self-defense skills
➝ How to use her current powers, minus being able to shift through both space and time.
➝ Vague flashes of what happened right before she arrived with Mircea in the clothing shop

(Also with this, definitely okay with her clairvoyance playing a part in remembering some of this down the road if she needs to remember less or her clairvoyance allowing her to retain more.)

Powers and Abilities:

Cassie has visions, usually gruesome, of both the past and future due to being Clairvoyant. Usually she can tell if an item was likely to trigger a vision before she touched it, normally by the negative psychic vibrations it gave off. It's rare for people to trigger it, but she still avoids shaking hands/physical contact just to be safe. She treats the visions the same way people treat disturbing news reports, since she can't normally change the outcome of the vision.

She can also sense imprints in the world around her: "Imprints are like a supernatural theater that shows the same movie over and over until you want to scream. Since it's usually something traumatic, running into one isn't fun. I'd spent my free time for a couple of months after I moved in learning the streets in the area, and one of the main things I'd been looking for was imprint zones. I'd found about fifty dealing with the burning of the city during the Civil War, but most were too weak to cause me more than a twinge. But there was a big one between my apartment and the agency... I started taking the long way around after I got caught in it one day. I have a lot of memories I'd just as soon forget; I don't need other people's nightmares."

In canon she can shift through time and space, for the game I'm assuming she wouldn't be able to shift through time, however it might be interesting if she could eventually learn to control her abilities so she can at least shift to different locations.

She can see and interact with Ghosts - an ability she got from her father (he was able to make ghosts his servants.) Because of this, she's always been something of a ghost magnet.

She's a Sensitive: can feel when vampires are around—it's like when someone walks over their grave—kind of a shiver down the spine combined with a feeling of something being wrong; never feels that around ghosts.
Unknown to Cassie, she has the Power for magic but no training. She doesn't learn this till much later.

Ward Tattoo (if she ever gets it back since she's without it right now): A lopsided pentagram tattooed on Cassie's back that can stop most magical attacks. It was crafted by the Silver Circle and was transferred to her. Its original pentagram shape had stretched as she grew older, now covering half her back and part of her left shoulder. Cassie originally believed that Tony had it put on her, but later found out that her mother somehow transferred it to her before she died when Cassie was four.

Power Word: Cassie knew one power word that was designed to add stamina in times of emergency by drawing on the body's reserves — all its reserves. It's dangerous to use, since if the power it gave ran out before the threat was over, she'd be as weak as a kitten when the bad guys caught her. She used one to reinforce Pritkin's shields with Billy Joe's help in an extreme case.

Roleplay Samples

Link to a sample of your character in action:

➝ Cassie on the KoL TDM
➝ Log w/ Pritkin in PSL setting

Link to a sample of your prose writing style:

➝ Darcy and Blake - Entranceway (prose)
➝ Darcy and Hydra!Steve - Entranceway (prose)
➝ Abigail Quote Prompt - Bakerstreet (prose)
➝ Darcy and Jane in the lab - Entranceway (prose)

Additional Samples:

➝ Abigail and Will on a train to the afterlife - Bakerstreet (brackets)
➝ Steve and Darcy death log - Entranceway (brackets)
➝ Kitty and Bobby nightmare - Eudio (brackets)

Any other important information (including special inventory items in their possession):

➝ Enchanted Dagger Bracelet: It deserted the dark mage for her — seeking out the greatest source of power in order to increase its own. They sometimes listen to her, but usually have a mind of their own... Especially if Pritkin is around since they aren't very fond of him.

➝ A few of Mac's wards after they fell off his skin and became little golden trinkets.

Why do you think this character would join/work with the Knights?

As far as Cassie is concerned, her life has been surrounded by nothing but death and pain. People that have gotten hurt because of her or her abilities... Because she wasn't strong enough to save them. She wants that all to be in the past, to be able to help people with her abilities - to become strong enough to keep people safe and make a difference. Strong enough to be able to get close to people without having to worry about them getting hurt because of her. And in an expansion of that, to help other people find that feeling of safety and happiness. It's easier to stay in control of how her powers are used by joining the Knights rather than letting another person take advantage of her for nefarious purposes.

Do you have a preference for which member of the Knights your character is squired to?

Nope! Surprise me :D