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History

The Girl

Kim’s upbringing was an exercise in mediocrity and hardscrabble social climbing. Her father was a tow truck driver and her mother an underutilized file clerk that never finished college. The former instilled in his only child an array of dirty tricks designed to get ahead in a ‘dog-eat-dog world’ at all costs. Watching him lift valuables from towed vehicles taught her early on that petty theft was just collecting their due and that exploiting the system was just fighting back. Rather than pay for childcare, she spent many a day or night sitting in his truck with him as he towed illegally parked vehicles.

Her mother had dropped out of college after getting pregnant with her, and while she didn’t resent Kim, she certainly wanted more for her daughter and drove her hard in school to earn a scholarship. That drive paid off with a scholarship to Tulane, where Kim was a successful, if slightly intimidated by the wealth and connections some of her peers enjoyed. She supplemented her own lifestyle away from home, using the petty thievery she’d learned from her father. Most people didn’t miss what she stole anyway, and she was clever enough to avoid suspicion as she found a place for herself among her upper class classmates without letting on her own humble origins: most assumed she was just some upper middle class girl as she worked her way through her freshman and sophomore years.

The Attack

In mid-2017 Kimberly’s life was nearly ended by a vampire poaching at Tulane. It attacked her as she returned from a dorm party and tore out her throat in its haste to swallow her blood. She survived only due to the timely intervention of a passing group of girls who answered her initial scream. The coeds managed to keep pressure on her wound until they could get her to the hospital. The entire situation was a mess for the Masquerade that Caroline Malveaux-Devillers, one of the more proficient practitioners of memory alteration remaining in the prince’s service, was dispatched to clean up. While the memories of most involved were relatively easy to patch over, and the Ventrue believed she’d ‘resolved’ the matter with Kimberly, the co-ed’s will was abnormally strong. Within weeks, she was picking at the mental scabs the memory alteration left. Within a month, the truth about that night was a bleeding wound that consumed her free time as she sought to reconcile not only her own conflicting memories, but the conflicting forensic evidence that all claimed she was crazy.

She began researching the occult—finding most of it garbage—before shifting to investigating other ‘attacks’ in the area. She followed up on her ‘attacker’ and dug into her ‘rescuers’ the night she was attacked. What she found began to convince her that there was more to that matter—to the world—than she’d previously believed, as insane as that might have seemed to her only weeks before. Her studies suffered as more and more of her time and energy was consumed by the questions surrounding the attack, and more so, the cover up.

“Cry, cry, something bad happened to me. I’m so traumatized. Please, that lick ripping out my throat was the best thing to ever happen to me.”
Kimberly Carson

The Truth

Kim ultimately wormed her way into a group of college-attending hunters, convincingly presenting herself as a victim of an attack eager to get even. In truth, she was more intrigued than angry and fearful. Here was a world that broke away from the mundane existence she’d had most of her life. The glimpse behind the veil was intoxicating, and over the next months she did everything she could with the hunters to learn more.

Unfortunately for the hunters, but perhaps fortunately for Kimberly, the prince’s childe was thorough in her work. On a follow-up with Kimberly, she discovered both the failure of her previous efforts and caught a whiff of the burgeoning hunter’s associations. Her agents placed Kimberly under surveillance and tracked the coed back to her fellow hunters. Only then did death descend upon them. The others fought: they died or were captured. Kimberly instead surrendered.

Caroline was faced with a choice: kill the would-be hunter, or find another use for her. After sifting through Kimberly’s memories with her powers, she chose the second path and offered the girl her blood and service. The girl agreed with few reservations: she wasn’t going to get a better option.

“You have immortal monsters out there with superpowers that can turn you into an immortal with superpowers, and your idiot response is ’let’s try to destroy them’? What’s next on the agenda, chugging bleach? I can tell how few of you have college degrees from here, and not just because of how you dress.”
Kimberly Carson

The Becoming

In the two years since she accepted the Ventrue’s blood, Kim has made a place for herself among the Ventrue’s servants as one of her favorites—an ambitious, dogged, and reliable young woman that displays limitless self-confidence and great initiative in pursuit of the often nebulous goals she’s assigned. She completed her undergraduate studies and took an ‘official’ part-time job at Monument Law while she pursued her J.D.

That work dovetails neatly with much of Caroline’s own tasking for her: investigating the city’s past, tracing lineages, and following the legal records for transfers of properties across numerous names and generations—all with the purpose of identifying Kindred influences across the city. In a secondary role, Kim is the Ventrue’s designated agent at Tulane. She helps keep an eye on the prime feeding ground, identifies suitable targets for both the Ventrue’s thirst and religious purposes, and watches for outside influences.

Along the way she’s continued to better herself, leveraging the doors opened by her service to the Ventrue and her associated servants to broaden her horizons and experiences.

“You serve a blood sucking leach on society that’s literally killing people, I serve a blood sucking leach that literally kills people. The real difference is I get to stay young forever and have a a nicer apartment—and I love my boss instead of hate them.”
Kimberly Carson on being a ghoul vs. corporate America

Personality

Psychology

Kimberly genuinely believes her status as an ‘insider’ and ghoul makes her superior to the ‘kine.’ The confidence and self-assurance her position affords her has inclined her towards sass and sarcasm towards most mortals. It’s not that she thinks she’s better than them: it’s that she is.

She’s one of the few among Caroline’s retinue that has seen her feed with any regularity. While the Ventrue was initially apprehensive about having a victim of an attack do so, Kimberly seems to get off on watching her domitor feed on or torment others almost as much as she gets off on getting blood from Caroline. A more educated psychologist might draw a parallel between having once been a victim and enjoying the reversed power dynamic, but the truth is Kimberly’s ethics and empathy towards her fellow human beings has always been somewhat limited.

Like all ghouls, Kimberly’s blood bond tugs upon her incessantly. Unlike most of her fellows in service to Hound Malveaux-Devillers, Kimberly doesn’t try to bury it, and instead flirts shamelessly with her domitor when alone or in closed company with her. She’s never thought of herself as a lesbian, or even bisexual, but that hasn’t stopped her from lusting after her domitor all the same. Much like a dog chasing a car, she’ll figure out what to do when she catches it. It is not coincidental that she proposed remaining in school to pursue a master’s, and perhaps a PhD to follow.

Like a not small number of ghouls, Kimberly believes she is destined for the Embrace, though she’s not yet actively seeking it. She still delights in her newfound powers as a ghoul and prefers to take advantage of some of the ‘perks’ of being mortal while she can.

Habits

• Hobbies: Though she no longer needs to support herself through it, Kim still enjoys recreational shoplifting—all the easier since her ghouling. It’s something she’s bonded with Autumn over, though she insists that the other ghoul’s ability to simply pass unnoticed takes much of the fun out of it. She keeps a display case of prized items, each of which has a story attached to it.

She cultivates a number of ‘boy toys’ from Tulane, notionally to satisfy her domitor’s thirst, but also to satisfy her own (vitae-heightened) libido.

Relationships

• Caroline Malveaux-Devillers: Caroline is Kim’s guiding star, though she tries her best not to show it, hiding her infatuation behind sass, confidence, and swagger. She’s one of the few among Caroline’s retinue that has seen her feed with any regularity. While the Ventrue was initially apprehensive about having a victim of an attack do so, Kimberly seems to get off on watching her domitor feed on or torment others almost as much as she gets off on getting blood from Caroline. A more educated psychologist might draw a parallel between having once been a victim and enjoying the reversed power dynamic, but the truth is Kimberly’s ethics and empathy towards her fellow human beings has always been somewhat limited.

• Fellow Ghouls: Kim pities the rest of her domitor’s ghouls for their more sterile, business-like relationships and interactions with her. Though she wouldn’t presume to hold herself as the leader of them (and indeed, doesn’t want to deal with the headaches such a responsibility would entail) she does consider herself above them in her domitor’s favor. That said, she readily recognizes their value, and has leveraged that value for herself as best she can.

• Autumn Rabinowitz: She has gone out of her way to ‘get along’ with Autumn, cultivating shared interests with her and eagerly eating up whatever knowledge she can pull from the older ghoul, who she thinks could use to let down her hair in more ways than one. She actually does genuinely enjoy the other ghoul’s company, if less than she puts on.
　
　
• Brian Fuller: Fuller she works out with multiple times a week, and regularly accompanies to the range to shoot. She has no interest in forsaking the finer things about being alive (to include food and wine) on the alter of his goal of peak performance, but she has been happy to further shape her body: Ferris is a great example of how the Embrace can come without warning, and if it does she wants to be happy with the body she’ll have forever.

• Sabirah Hakimi: Sabirah she had found herself intensely jealous of, for the among of time she ‘gets’ to spend with Caroline. This is all the more intense for the other ghoul’s lack of seeming infatuation with Caroline: a classic example of someone not knowing how good they have it.

Residence

Unlike the majority of Caroline’s ghouls, Kimberly does not live in the Giani Building, instead maintaining a house near Tulane at the Ventrue’s prompting on the corner of Palmer Ave and LaSalle Place. The house is used with some frequency by Caroline in her more casual hunting, with either the Ventrue or her ghoul luring or inviting victims over for her to feed on. Outside of its practical uses, the home is tastefully, if darkly, furnished.