daphne has a cunning plan. : voixdeville

voixdeville

daphne has a cunning plan.

Mar 13, 2011 23:02

…BASICS;

FULL NAME: Daphne Henot-James
DATE OF BIRTH: July 30 1967
STAR SIGN: Leo
ANCESTRESS: Katharina Henot
BIRTHPLACE: , England.
RESIDENCE: Clifton Wood House.
PROFESSION: Nightclub owner, burlesque performer, serial divorcée.
WORKPLACE: Wyrd; Bristol nightclub, an opulent, bewitching blend of old guard and avant-garde.
DESCRIPTION: Daphne is 5'9", with pale blue eyes and thick red hair that she wears slightly past her shoulders, often down or only half-up. A dancer and performer for most of her life, she has a slim, fit build that is well-maintained, and typically well-displayed. She will usually go understated in her makeup (but always, always wears makeup), but not so much in her dress; her personal style is tailored, sharp, the kind of professional that could conceivably mean pro-domme. She wears flats under protest, and she is a city girl from her top to her toes. Her perfume of choice is currently Cartier's Le Baiser du Dragon (2003). (STYLE GUIDE)

…PERSONALITY;

Daphne is outgoing to the point of exhaustion for the people around her; she's flamboyant and always on, a little bit over the top in a way that harkens back to an earlier period in theatricality. She's enthusiastic and effusive - brimful of ideas and a grounded willingness to do the work to make sure her ideas come to fruition. Fascinated by other people, Daphne is engaging and warm, but a shameless attention-seeker; her natural method is to engage with an audience, making her charismatic, attractive, and incredibly difficult to live with daily. Everything in Daphne's life is a performance - the concept of 'performative identity' is one that she's embraced in a very literal way, consciously and unconsciously. Creating relationships is easy, but maintaining them is much less so - she isn't disloyal and she isn't uncaring, but her personality is like a Russian nesting doll of playing roles and her partners often end the relationship feeling that they have been held, deliberately or otherwise, at arm's length.

Nevertheless, upbeat and optimistic, she is always willing to try, try again; 'giving up' is not something in her vocabulary and she has pushed the world to get her own way so many times that the word is no longer 'failure', it is 'setback', and if stymied, she will often come at the same notion in several different ways before finally moving on. Opinionated and often single-minded, Daphne's can be inflexible, unwilling to back down and stubborn to a point that frustrates and pisses off the people around her. (Her playlist is going to include Whatever Lola Wants, because my God, how could it not.)

Living a hectic life with exacting standards for not only herself and her work but also those around her and in her employ, Daphne runs a tight ship in her professional life and keeps her personal life fast-paced and almost equally demanding. She's more prone to overestimating what someone is capable of than underestimating them, leading sometimes to disappointment and resentment that has a tendency to linger.

For as much as she's well-organized, calculating and canny, Daphne is very much a present person, living in the moment; she plans ahead, but she takes care not to get caught up in that to the point where she'd be neglecting experiences as they happened. In some ways a businesslike hedonist, Daphne's driving pursuit is satisfaction - her accomplishments on stage and off it are just an extension of a personality that wants and at the end of the day she's a woman defined by desire. Sexual, spiritual, social, professional - she's never going to be so satisfied she becomes still, but this isn't necessarily a flaw, and it isn't anything that bothers her. Rather than the drive to fill an emptiness, this is a need for constant, stimulated growth.

…HISTORY;

The Henot-James family originated in Cologne, Germany, adding the -James several generations ago as they meandered through Europe, finally settling in England in anticipation (Daphne says) of Daphne Henot-James's birth there in 1967. With both parents leading busy professional lives - Julian Henot-James worked as an investigative journalist while Professor Carolyn Henot-James would've got further in academia with more willingness to play ball with university politics - Daphne was unofficially raised by her paternal aunt, Madeleine, who babysat and did the housework in exchange for not being forced to pay rent to her brother. Madeline was therefore the bad influence pointedly not held accountable when, at seventeen, Daphne relocated to NYC with her first husband, an older American man named Lindsay Rivers, who owned a vaudeville-themed club where she got her start as a burlesque act. Despite their uneasiness about the plan, it must be noted that the Henot-Jameses assisted their daughter in achieving it; rarely directly her authority figures in the figures in the first place, they were at a disadvantage when she took a scheme into her mind and alternately bullied and cajoled them around to her way of thinking in order to make an intercontinental relocation happen at a barely-married seventeen.

While Lindsay Rivers was all on Daphne (so to speak), Madeleine had been the one to give her the most thorough introduction to their shared heritage and grounding in what that meant, and she was the one who got the most regular status updates (while Julian and Carolyn spoke proudly of Daphne's growing accomplishments out one side of their mouth and reminded their friends that burlesque was not striptease out the other). She was the first to hear about Daphne's separation from Rivers (after three years), which didn't immediately involve either a) moving out of their house or b) ceasing her performances at his club, both of which remained convenient for roughly a year until she got around to hiring a divorce lawyer who advised her that this was not the best way of going about it.

Daphne's early shenanigans set the tone for much of the rest of her life - she grew into an ambitious, hard-working and accomplished woman who made things happen, in her career and in her magic. Her personal life was more fraught; Rivers was only the first of a series of ex-husbands (and one annulment we don't talk about, rendering her marriage to Zimri Durant null and void on the grounds of deception) littering her history, men who got caught up in her orbit and, inevitably, fell back to earth with a crash. (A crash, and also: divorce lawyers. Daphne's first divorce lawyer (Cal Whelan) was so good she continued as his client in future settlements, inspiring an odd friendship that tended to make her later partners a little bit uncomfortable - there's nothing romantic between them, more of a trainwreck fascination, but it's awkward knowing that you're about to propose to someone who has a divorce lawyer on speed dial who's memorized the recipe of her favourite separation cocktail.)

Travelling extensively ever since that first transatlantic relocation, Daphne remained largely based out of New York until the late 90s, when she became involved with a wealthy Englishman (related to a title, but not titled himself, described his business as "in property") who coaxed her into making the move home to marry him. The relationship fell apart during their engagement - she was, however unconsciously, the symbol of his rebellion more than a woman he wanted to spend his life with, and (for once) Daphne broke it off before it could get to an untenable point. She remained in England and, a few years distance later, they remained friendly. He later introduced her to the man who would eventually be her most recent ex-husband, a Bristol native with a corporate security company that had him often travelling for work. Daphne moved from London to Bristol when they married, with the intention to finally open her own nightclub there - Wyrd, which would open two years after her wedding and relocation, a professional success amidst the rocky relationship she had with Grant Reynell.

The official origin story is that Wyrd's building was once owned and used by eccentric Aleister Crowley types, fascinated by the occult - thus inspiring the name and spooky, otherworld theme of the outrageous club. It's true that Daphne was interested in the location for this reason, but the implication of a gimmick is a cover for the fact that there were magic users working out of a hidden basement in the building and that Daphne specifically chose the location for the lingering reverberations of their power and to gain access to what would be an excellent and private place for her own magic. An enchantment laced through the building itself encourages patrons to let go of their inhibitions - there's no coercion involved, but often partygoers at Wyrd find themselves living in the moment more than usual, doing what they want, bewitched just enough to have a really damn good night. It's good for them, it's good for business, and it keeps Daphne's head in the game.

As Wyrd's success continued, Daphne's marriage deteriorated, and by 2006 the couple had begun her latest divorce proceedings. Reynell surrendered all interests in Wyrd and the house that they had shared in order to avoid more of a financial loss, and Daphne remained based in Bristol, where she will remain based for the foreseeable future.

…POWERS;

As a witch of the old lines, Daphne's abilities are as follows:

Spellcasting: primarily involving extensive ritual (see also: the basement of Wyrd), very little is instantaneous. Daphne's private library related to ritual spellcasting is pretty extensive (and really private), and is her primary reference. A lot of memorizing!

Venomous blood: While this mainly means that if a vampire tries to eat her, they're going to die a slow and unpleasant death of being eaten from the inside out, Daphne's blood is also potentially dangerous to humans and she is not a blood donor for this reason. (She's implied illness/drug related reasons when pushed on the subject in the past!)
Agility: An athletic woman with a background in dance, Daphne honed a natural inclination to be both faster and more flexible than your average bear.

Dream-walking: Performed by a ritual, Daphne can infiltrate the unconscious mind of a human being to plant suggestion or discourage an idea, or investigate their mind. Relatedly: witches are linked in an ability to share their own dreams with each other, like a really awesome telecommunications network plan. Only better.
Aura reading: Some witches have specific psychic abilities (psychometry is common); Daphne's is the ability to read auras, which you can bet is extremely useful in her line of work and allows her to observe which of the patrons at Wyrd has been affected by her spellwork. (Note: please let me know if there's anything about your character she should be picking up this way!)

Element manipulation: In concert with other witches, Daphne has the ability/potential to control weather, and singularly she can temporarily manipulate water, allowing her to remain underwater for long stretches of time (at least an hour) if necessary.

Suggestion: With extended eye-contact, Daphne can plant an idea (a suggestion) in the mind of someone susceptible. It's manipulation, rather than mind control or outright coercion, and strong-willed people as well as supernatural beings sensitive to it are able to resist.
Sight: As in, the sight of supernatural beings and phenomena - ghosts, fairies, etc, etc.
Resistance: Witches have a natural resistance to mind control and illusions, of varying strength depending on how they've honed and build their shields. Daphne's shields are effective (particularly against illusions), but not impervious.

Soulcraft: By use of ritual, the manipulation and warping of souls. (Not devouring.) By its nature, soulcraft is something that even the witches tend to give the side-eye, and it is a very intense endeavour that is rarely used for this variety of reasons.

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