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Player Info

Name: Liisu!
Age: 25
Contact: matriarchal; relevanttomyinterests AT gmail DOT com; drliisugari @ AIM
Characters Already in Teleios: N/A
Reserve: Here

Character Basics:

Character Name: Benevenuta Crispo (recent pseudonyms: Vanessza Bernát, Mélisande Sinclair, Eleni Argyris, Dorothea Bergfalk)
Journal: asklepios
Age: 452 (b. 1561)
Universe: Highlander: The Series
Canon Point: Post-series.
Debt:

Class A: Murder, 50x; Espionage, 200x. (250 years)
Class B: Assault with/without weapon, 150x; Theft, ; Robbery, 85x; Burglary/B&E, 150x; Kidnapping, 7x. (196 years)
Class C: 31 years

60x Falsifying documents

15x Impersonating government personnel / agents

1x Impersonating members of the clergy

25x Con artistry

7x Impersonating a dead body

7x Faking her own death

2x Marriage under false pretenses

1x Piracy (related to the above)

57x Obstruction of justice

200x Eluding law enforcement

1x Child abduction

25x Torture and illegal interrogation

4x Adultery

2x Squatting

GRAND TOTAL: 478 and 9 months (please feel free to correct me, I failed remedial math)

Original Character Section:

Setting:

Concept/premise for the death cult Benevenuta was raised in within the Highlander universe.

History:

Timing was on Benevenuta Crispo’s side when a stillborn son was swapped out promptly by a midwife for a wailing daughter and she went from foundling to the youngest member of the Crispo dynasty on the Duchy of the Archipelago in the space of hours. She might have been raised a Venetian noblewoman, or she might’ve suffered her first death far too young, as the Ottoman Empire moved to take full control of the Duchy, but instead at the age of three - around the same time her grandfather inherited the Duchy and two short years before he was deposed and fled to Venice - she was discovered as a pre-Immortal by Ayse, who left the Archipelago with the toddling noble child in tow. Her parents presumably thought of this more as kidnap than Benevenuta, who doesn’t remember the Crispos well (if at all) and came to think of it along the lines of ‘adoption’.

Fostered by Ayse into the Serpents of the Tree (Nahashi) - a secret society of Immortals who disdain the Game and devote their lives a step outside of humanity instead to culling its chaff, pruning the metaphorical tree of those who are considered by the Nahashi council to be irrevocably evil - Benevenuta was raised in and dedicated to their beliefs and practises, the idea of Immortals as the cleansing fire brought about by nature to contend with the darkest of humanity’s impulses. They are deliberate, calculated and considered, and carefully cultivate a sense of morality and a resistance to the senseless competition of the Game; though impulse decisions aren’t their style individually or collectively, the fact Benevenuta was marked for Immortality and the situation with the Crispo family had meant her adoption by Ayse was the correct choice under the circumstances.

Benevenuta’s ritualized First Death took place when she was twenty-two, in 1583; she chose her mother, Ayse, to wield the knife. After her resurrection, she joined the ranks of the Serpents in a more active capacity - they were at their height of activity in her first century, then still considered young among them. Her dedication to their cause put her somewhat at odds with her adoptive father, Ayse’s second husband, Matej Stolsbord, who has never approved of their secret society. Much as she loves him, she was and is very much her mother’s daughter in that way. She stayed relatively close by both Ayse and Matej through much of her first century of life, but in 1634 she decided abruptly that she’d had quite enough of the tug of war between them as partners and parents, and finally had her own much belated adolescent NO U moment. She struck out on her own, deliberately severing contact with both of them in an act of frustration and pettiness, and stayed aloof for more than a few decades; it was several after she’d decided that she regretted cutting herself off before her pride permitted her to reach out to her parents and apologize for her own behaviour, which had (suffice to say) not been completely flawless when she broke away. Sometime during the 1700s, after rejoining Ayse, she was initiated into the Blue Brethren Sisterhood, an all-woman subgroup within the Serpents who never have any more or less members than thirteen. Putting the Navy Seals to shame, the Sisterhood remains consistent and coherent as the Nahashi overall begin to decline after the 17th century.

While eventually she became more or less comfortable moving in and out of her parents' lives (and them moving in and out of hers, in turn), she made a habit of spending her time with them separately and, as is traditional among the Nahashi, secluding herself from the world periodically in order to study, center herself, and return to it refreshed rather than weighed down by her age and experience. She developed a preference for ranged weapons - to this day collects antique crossbows to repair and maintain as effective weapons, albeit mostly obsolete, everybody needs a hobby - and though as an Immortal she has not been capable of completely avoiding the Game, the frequency of her Immortal kills (of headhunters who wouldn’t take ‘piss off’ for an answer) declined dramatically with the advent of more efficient and reliable firearms. They permit an easier method of disabling her opponent and leaving the area with time to spare, which she has proceeded to take advantage of; throughout her life, she has taken less than twenty heads and only three of those since becoming proficient with firearms.

Over the course of four hundred and fifty years, she’s had various relationships of varying importance with mortals and Immortals alike; her strongest and most lingering bonds remain Ayse and Matej, their familial ties remaining a high priority. In Matej’s case, their time together often involves his attempts to put her on a path away from the Serpents - encouraging her down alternative career paths and exposing her to new concepts and ideas. Most recently, she went to med school and eventually certified as a trauma surgeon (after a residency in general surgery, etc) at his suggestion, though her willingness to appease him through entertaining these ideas is generally tied back to how potentially useful they can be to her in pursuit of the goals laid down by the Council and it’s a constant source of friction that often results in what Benevenuta tends to diplomatically describe as ‘Dad needing a break from me’. When not in pursuit of a target - which is most of the time, due to the relative infrequency of the Serpents’ direct action, often working out to less than a handful of assassinations over the course of what would be a mortal lifetime - she tends to live quietly, often as a student, sometimes building small mortal families around herself. Having outlived her own mortal stepchildren, she has all the more respect for the bonds she has with Ayse and Matej and considers them essential facets of her life - particularly now, as the Game intensifies with the modern age and as the Serpents are more diminished (if not actually gone, as is popularly believed among most of the Immortals outside their society who were aware of its existence).

Currently, she’s working as a general practitioner at a non-profit clinic in Paris (still in large part under supervision from more senior practitioners), where she lives as Dr Vanessza Bernát - posing as the daughter of a deceased stepson from her last mortal marriage. She maintains a secluded property elsewhere, containing the sentimental relics of past lives lived and where she retires for mental hibernation when it’s time to take a break from the world; it is presently shut up. Prior to coming to Paris, she sold the Bernát house that she'd shared with her husband in Győr.

Personality:

Laid-back and playful, she approaches life with a passionate enthusiasm for the grand scale and a bit more interpersonal reserve; in person she's friendly and witty, but low-key, deprecating and subtly remote. Unlike those whose immortality came as a shock with their First Death, Benevenuta grew up in the culture of the Nahashi, aware of her eventual fate and her purpose; she never believed herself to be mortal and never lived what could be properly termed ‘a mortal life’ and the slight distance she feels from them is not uncomfortable or strange to her, just a by-product of the fact that she is not like they are. Her methods in studying the mortal perception of history is in a lot of ways just a formalized version of the way she’s been relating to the world all her life. Her understanding of how that perception changes without altering the fundamentals of what it is perceiving is reflected, in a lot of ways, in how exciting she finds the continuous reinvention of self that her life offers her; as hard as it is to move on from one life, there is always another one to be lived somewhere else. There is always something new she can learn, something she can become that she hasn’t been before, and she takes care to preserve this wonder through periodic seclusion. This having always been her life has meant she’s been aware from the get-go that having these strategies is so important to maintaining personal equilibrium, and she’s unquestionably benefited from that.

Life experience is something she considers invaluable, even or especially when it’s painful; Benevenuta believes wholeheartedly in the Nahashi cause, and it’s important to her that she should be connected to the world in order to better understand what it needs and what her place is in that. A strong sense of morality and ethics isn’t something that exists in a vacuum, and she doesn’t believe that you can effectively protect something that you don’t understand. The best way, here, is to fully immerse - it’s not just a learning experience, it’s the life that she’s living and she does believe in living it as fiercely as possible. While at times she can be remote (often underscoring the ‘too old for her age’ impression she tends to give), she’s never absent from a moment. She’s very thoughtful and considered in what she does and what she says, but it doesn’t connote hesitance; that which she decides to do and say, she’s very sure about. As a result of all this, for the most part Benevenuta is a pretty even-tempered woman. When she’s not, her less pleasant moods have been known to veer into a theatricality that can border on histrionics; her anger tends to be incisively vicious, involving a lot of sarcasm and gesturing. This is not by any stretch of the imagination well-tailored to defusing upsets and a good, early example would be the first time she broke away from Ayse and Matej - she had a point, but she failed spectacularly to cover herself in glory in the delivery of it.

Though they learn and grow through their lifetimes and experiences, in some ways the emotional growth of an Immortal remains tied to the person and age they were at death; the personas that Benevenuta adopts (youthful, up-and-coming, eager to learn and careful of missteps) reflect the fact that she was only in her early twenties when she died, that she was new to the world and newer still to the world outside the Immortal culture that she'd been raised in since she was three years old. It's a part of why her relationship with her parents - both Ayse and Matej - remains in some ways so consistent to what it's always been. She's an independent adult and takes pride in that, but she'll always be their daughter because of not just her personality or upbringing but the nature of what she is. Her youth at death has been both a help and a hindrance to her over the years; she's flexible, adaptive, and had never had the opportunity to get truly set in her ways or fixed into one solid persona from which she couldn't adjust. On the other hand, she can't pass for older than late twenties at most, which not only limits the shelf-life of the identities she builds for herself but has also in some ways limited her options when she chooses such an identity - she has qualifications she can't easily explain.

To go into some detail on her distance from humanity - Benevenuta's unique upbringing, having always known what she'd become, also has its own particular benefits and drawbacks. The First Death of an Immortal is often a painful, shocking experience that rips them from one life they'd believed was their only life into something strange and alien that puts them apart from humanity and then tries to kill them, repeatedly, for the rest of their lives. It can be traumatic, and it can result in a lot of difficulty handling their longevity and their interactions with humanity. Benevenuta's knowledge of her purpose (as she saw it, and as she was taught to see it) meant that she had a very different experience (something that she treasured as a familial intimacy), but it also meant that she lacked the life experience that most other Immortals have - she has never just lived out a human existence. She's never truly experienced that world from the inside; she's always been a step apart, and though she prizes it and protects it, there are ways in which she can't understand or relate to it. It's reflected sometimes in the way she interacts with other people - she's always trying to improve, there, and she can stray into slightly awkward intensity, fascinated by what makes the rest of the world tick. It's a bit like she's always trying to learn how to be a person, peering with interest out at those who've already mastered the skill. Her distance isn't a painful thing for her, as it is for some, but she does recognize it for what it is and she does have concerns that she could become too out of touch; it already impacts her personal life.

Powers/Abilities:
Short of decapitation, Benevenuta cannot die and will recover from all injury - while ordinarily lethal injuries may temporarily incapacitate her, she will eventually get up, dust herself off, and keep coming. It’s sort of the point. Her strength and agility, additionally, are a cut above that of a mortal to allow for the nature of the Game, and are traits she’s honed as a result of her ~lifestyle choices~. She has taken eighteen heads over the course of four hundred and fifty years. It's also worth noting that Immortals appear to be able to pull their sword from out of no where; Benny is probably never without hers, regardless of appearances.

Annnd because this seems like as good a place as any for this: Benevenuta has been studying for pretty much all of her life; in modern qualifications, she’s a board certified trauma surgeon (and has, since her certification in the 1980s, remained abreast of medical science's continued advances), has a Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics, and done multiple post-grad studies in history with varying focuses in varying countries, largely for the sake of developing a rounded understanding of how humanity perceives history and keeping up with how that perception changes both over time and across different regions of the world. Out of both practical necessity and genuine interest, she’s multilingual (though at three she’d had her first words and was moving onto a healthy babble, she considers Greek her native language by way of Ayse). One of her more consistent careers has been as a novelist - writing ‘meticulously researched’ historical romances under a series of different pseudonyms. At one point, mixing it up, she worked as a consultant on a historical television series.

She’s been trained and training for essentially her entire life to be an assassin; her preference these days is the sniper rifle, but she’s proficient with multiple firearms (a crack shot, at this point in her life) and will always hold a fondness for the crossbow. She’s capable of making, repairing and maintaining her own crossbows, and owns numerous variations as both collector’s items and capable weapons. She’s studied poisons informally and in apprenticeships over the years, though it’s never been her focus; it’s useful and having multiple options and disciplines at her disposal seems smart, but she does have a marked preference elsewhere. Not quite similarly, she’s an exceptionally competent swordswoman (the rarity of her Immortal kills is largely a matter of personal choice) but views it as a necessary evil due to the nature of their kind, not something she would’ve chosen to pursue. Her hand to hand combat is capable, and she has a tendency to think like a doctor in a fight - she’ll aim specifically to inflict injuries that are more difficult to treat or more likely to have significant, lasting impact. As a result of not only her training to be most effective an assassin but also the simple necessity dictated by moving through a largely mortal world, she’s also a talented liar and in that way can be the consummate actress.

Appearance: A blue-eyed natural brunette, she has her hair coloured regularly in recent years (blonde), and generally appears a more or less fresh-faced twenty-something, skewing earlier or later depending on how she dresses and presents herself. She’s 5’6”, with a petite, athletic build and a slightly odd set of features that don’t seem as though they should add up to an attractive woman; she’s pretty at some angles and awkward at others. She has a small, discreet rose-shaped brand that marks her as a member of the Blue Brethren Sisterhood.
PLAYED BY: Natalie Dormer
MEASUREMENTS: 34-26-34
STYLE GUIDE: Polyvore.

Samples:

Actionspam Sample:

Texts from last hideous city-wide monster riot
The doctor shills for volunteers for the charitable foundation she's a face of

Prose Sample:

Benevenuta gets busted as a total liar (cw: violence, resurrection grossness)
Liars lying to each other