Vlasta «Mal» Malova / MALADICTA (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
disbenefits) wrote2012-06-29 10:51 am
disbenefits) wrote2012-06-29 10:51 am
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roadoftrode
I: PLAYER INFO
Name (or internet handle): Anne
Age: 21
Contact: trustmeimthe AT yahoo;![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
trustmeimthe
Current characters in Road of 'Trode: N/A
II: CHARACTER INFO
Name: Maladicta von Borogravia[1]
Dreamwidth Username:deshabille
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment [Discworld series]
Image: here!
Age/Appearance: Apparently 19-ish, real age never stated. Mal is a Discworld vampire, and as such she maintains certain vampiric standards. She is pale, slim, average height, and gray-eyed. Her hair is black and cut stylishly short. Her clothes are always neat. She has abnormally, though not supernaturally, long canines. Overall, she strikes one as androgynous enough that her confidence allows her to portray herself however she desires.
Wiki Links: No such thing, alas. Here's a history, though!
On the Disc – an aggressively whimsical semi-parallel version of Earth – there was a country called Borogravia. Borogravia was proud; Borogravia had a mad god (Nuggan) and a dead duchess, both of whom gave a great degree of false hope to a poor and barren nation; Borogravia made war. For years and years, because it could, until there was nothing but war in Borogravia, and it had run out of sons. When a country that loves war runs out of sons, and when propaganda stops working because of that nasty tendency of people to come back from war with fewer arms and legs than they left with, those who enter into warfare tend to have very individual motivations. In the case of what came to be termed in Borogravia the Monstrous Regiment, they were also not sons.
Eight young women cut off their hair, put on trousers, and joined the army to fight for the glory of the Motherland!!, except not really, because generally they were running away from rather than towards something. Maladicta certainly was. Tired of not getting respect from her family (because female vampires are meant to be sexy, not clever or strong or independent), Mal joined the Ins-and-Outs and quickly detected that her idea was not particularly original. She was surrounded by women.
Unfortunately, these eight women were the last recruits of the current war with Zlobenia, and as such were given shoddy equipment and told to go to the front lines posthaste. Before this could happen, however, the recruiting corporal (name of Strappi), a political spy for the highest Borogravian military authority, became so thrilled at the idea of heading to the front lines that he pissed himself and deserted, significant largely because a) he gave away the squad's position to the nearby Zlobenian infantry, and b) he stole Mal's coffee. Mal really needed her coffee; without coffee she would kill for a cup of . . . well, blood. [See powers section]
But speaking of the Zlobenians: those plucky girls manage to capture and humiliate (that is, kick in the fork and strip) the infantry forces, although it might have interested them to know that Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia, the heir to the Borogravian throne and a major reason for the war's outbreak, happened to be in that infantry party . . . and was the one kicked in the fork . . . and actually became quite angry about it. Due to the exciting influence of the Free and Fair Press of city-state Ankh-Morpork, the story of Prince Heinrich's ultimate humiliation at the hands of a small group of green recruits quickly became a hot topic of conversation across the Disc and instantly changed political attitudes towards Borogravia from They are insane and must be stopped (possibly accurate) to They are plucky underdogs and we should support them.
Due to confusing verbal and tactical maneuvering by the Ins-and-Outs' tremendously inexperienced Lieutenant Blouse, the regiment ultimately ended up making its way to Kneck Keep, a vital Borogravian stronghold which had been taken over by Zlobenians. Along this trip, the lack of coffee became an issue. Having substituted her addiction to human blood for an addiction to coffee, Mal began experiencing flashsides, or hallucinations of alternate realities – in this case, of the Vietnam War. As the squad made its way to the Keep, Mal got so close to reverting to her original addiction and attacking one of her fellow soldiers that she nearly had to be staked through the heart – until a blessed bag of beans dropped from the sky and nearly concussed her.[2]
An unconscious yet thoroughly caffeinated Mal (she sucked the caffeine directly from the beans through the bag, which is apparently a thing you can do if you're desperate enough) was left outside the Keep with their Sergeant Jackrum while the others disguised themselves as washerwomen to get inside the fortress. Mal was quickly caught and imprisoned by Zlobenians within the Keep; the others quickly followed (partially because no one believed they were actually women). After a complex series of power shifts within the Keep, the Borogravians retook it and, in their turn, became tremendously offended at the presence of women within their army, despite the fact that the squad (sans Mal, who was still unconscious) had freed them from their cells.
A court-martial was called – but not officially, since a court-martial is only for proper (that is, male) soldiers - and the top brass of Borogravia was about to disregard the squad's achievements and send them home when Sergeant Jackrum returned and revealed that about, oh, one third of the entire military was of the female persuasion. Halfway through this exciting development, the semi-divine Duchess of Borogravia possessed one of the recruits and demanded that Borogravia let go of her and of Nuggan and that the generals return home to save their people form starvation.
It was only after this, in the confusing and frequently condescending peace negotiations, that Mal revealed that she was really Maladicta. This was met with a general lack of offense from the squad, and everyone was sent home with a pat on the back and a none-too-subtle hint not to come back. Mal disappeared, floating around the country aimlessly, never going home and never staying in one place for too long. The female generals stayed silent about their identities. A fragile peace was brokered.
And then, a few months later, broken again. Borogravia went to war one more time. And Corporal Maladicta joined Sergeant Polly Perks serving openly in the Ins-and-Outs as women, whether the brass liked it or not.
[1] Her last name is never stated in canon. This last name was created following the pattern of Überwaldean vampires with the surname "von Überwald". So, yes.
[2] It is worth pointing out that these were not actually divine beans. They had been delivered by the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, which for various complicated and above all political reasons had a presence within Kneck Keep. They were supposed to be on Zlobenia's side, sort of, but mostly the commander of the Watch, Sam Vimes, just liked the squad. Hence hand-delivery of beans.
Personality: Raised in the vampiric aristocracy, Mal was well-educated according to a very specific definition of education. She is literate, quite intelligent, and articulate. Perhaps most importantly for a vampire, she is charming and quick-witted. She can outsmart most of her peers in the army by talking circles around them. She's quick with a jibe, although they are always cleverly underhanded, and with a comeback; she is not easily offended, which is a pro considering the fact that she is canonically surrounded by people who understand neither her species nor her gender.
As charming as she is, though, her haughtiness is often overwhelming. Polly Perks "objects to [her] permanent expression of effortless superiority," which she maintains at all times except when she is going through coffee withdrawals. Part of this is genuine and part is a defense mechanism. Mal does consider herself smarter than her peers and makes an effort to know things about them that give her an advantage. She may use such an advantage if it's helpful to her. However, she also comes from a family in which her skills and intelligence were ignored; upon arriving in the army, she immediately establishes herself as cleverer, faster, and stronger than the other recruits as a defense mechanism. This speaks to her underlying insecurity, which has multiple facets. First, she is a vampire trying to live without blood, which, in a way, is denying her own identity; on the other hand, she has entirely divorced herself from vampire culture because she considers it to be unnecessarily focused on female sexuality rather than power and because she does not feel taken seriously within that culture. She is unable to articulate this entirely clearly, although she does try to confide in Polly towards the end of Monstrous Regiment. Second (and relatedly), she constantly lives in fear of losing control of herself and hurting someone she cares about, which will be discussed in more detail later. Finally, and simply, she is very young and doesn't really understand who she is yet. She joined the army on a whim and found in it a career; she didn't choose it. So up until now she's relied largely on chance and used bluster to appear more directed than she actually is.
During the course of Monstrous Regiment, Mal develops feelings of loyalty for the first time, not to her country or to the army but to the other recruits, most likely as a result of their surprising loyalty to her. The fact that the entirety of the Ins-and-Outs stuck together and protested the status quo, despite their vastly different motivations and goals and the chances they had to opt out of confrontation, must have been surprising to someone who'd grown up in a strictly traditional aristocratic family in which nobody rocked the boat, or indeed ever wanted to. Further, the fact that her fellow recruits tried to save her during her withdrawals rather than immediately staking her in the heart led her to trust them with her life. Given that the entire novel takes place over only a few days, all of this implies that Mal is likely to become extremely loyal extremely quickly, particularly in a high-stress scenario.
Mal is a loudmouth. She is usually the first to protest a perceived injustice, as when the recruits witnessed a large group of fleeing refugees and were told to forget about it. While she often does not act on her protestations, her words can spur others to action, as often was the case when she and Polly worked together.
In the Discworld, vampires don't exactly drink blood for sustenance; they're addicted to it like a drug (although they do need some sort of blood on a regular basis to survive, it can be animal blood in very small amounts; Mal shows no signs of needing any blood whatsoever in Monstrous Regiment). In fact, the Überwald League of Temperance, or Black Ribboners, is a group analogous to Alcoholics Anonymous, which encourages its members to abstain from blood. Many vampires choose to simply replace one addiction with another. Mal's new addiction is coffee. When she doesn't have any in canon, as happens while the regiment is on the move, she reverts back to her original addiction and craves blood. When she reverts her cravings are so intense that she can't control herself; however, she is self-aware enough to realize that she's a danger to others. In the interim period while the effects of the coffee are wearing off, she becomes completely unaware of her surroundings and experiences "flashsides," or flashes of alternate realities. In Monstrous Regiment, she gets flashsides of the Vietnam War. During flashsides, Mal is entirely unaware that her original reality ever existed.
Reason for playing: Mal has always intrigued me as a character because, like all Black Ribboners, she is actively pretending not to be this big, scary, powerful, dangerous being in order not to be hunted down and killed. However, Mal strikes me as more complex than that for several reasons: one, because she is so full of swagger and yet really quite young and unsure of herself, as is revealed towards the end of Monstrous Regiment, adding still more layers of contradiction to her identity; and two, because she is so heavily influenced by those around her. Her experience in the army would have been an entirely different one had she not been surrounded by strong personalities such as Polly's and Jackrum's. Because she is so young and her identity is still in flux, I'm really fascinated by the prospect of playing her in an AU setting where she can be surrounded by radically different characters and settings than she had experience with in her canon. Finally, the juxtaposition of the semi-medieval setting of Discworld and the futuristic/cyberpunk-y world of the Ark will be really fun to play with, I think.
III. AU INFO
Name: Vlasta "Mal" Malova; she often goes by the alias Milena Tichý
Age/Appearance: 19, same general appearance - pale, suave, average height. She tends to change specifics of her appearance on a regular basis - rarely her height or build, but specifics of her facial structure and especially accessories. Basically, when needed, she camouflages herself in order to mesh with whatever group she is currently interacting with. She tends towards dark, simple clothes, although they're not as good quality as they were when she lived with her family.
History: Vlasta Malova is the daughter of Zinaida and Mikuláš Malova, the heads of one of the few extremely well-to-do families in the Twin City. Born into an island of pure opulence within the squalor of the City, Mal grew up with the best that could possibly be provided for her. She was told by her parents from a young age that the Malovas were a generous family, philanthropists, even, and it was true that they did donate food and so forth to certain visible members of the more photogenic poor. No one was ever quite sure how they maintained their wealth and power, but people said it was because they were respected and loved.
The real reason they could afford to give so much away was that Zinaida and Mikuláš's true business was trading in black market black magic. The Malovas, as it turned out, specialized in the piracy of life force, zoiklepty, manipulation of the fabric of reality in the Ark so that months, years, even decades were transferred from one person to another. They targeted the young and strong, pulling the life from them and storing it in small winged statuettes to sell to the old and infirm, while the targets suddenly withered and died, their sudden illness blamed on the poor quality of life in the City. The Malovas nurtured an empire of exorbitantly inflated trade, selling weeks at a time to desperate people on the brink of death in exchange for either half that time in exchange for food, goods, and often servitude. Those in the Malovas' service were expected to be on call at any time to do all the nasty things they weren't willing to do themselves. It was common for targets to be asked to threaten, torture, or assassinate a member of a rival in the black market. If they didn't, their life was taken back with a twist of Zinaida's fingers.
However, the biggest secret of zoiklepty was that there was no upper limit. You couldn't ever have too much life force; you couldn't overdose. It was, in short, the secret to immortality, and the elder Malovas split a healthy twenty-five-year-old a day in order to remain a vibrant, well-preserved thirty-ish each.
Mal's childhood was uneventful, if lonely, for the most part. Her two elder brothers, Záviš and Čeněk, captured most of her parents' attention; Záviš, the oldest, was to take over the family business after Mikuláš retired, and Čeněk was next in line and so had to be trained as if he'd take over one day, too. Mal, who refused to answer to Vlasta, first because she couldn't pronounce it and later out of habit and stubbornness, was a daughter, extraneous and generally ignored. When one of her parents did pay attention to her, it was her mother, who would subject her to grueling training sessions in family magic - because even if she was a girl, she'd have to use it some day if she wanted to live forever. Not that Mal was ever told what the magic was used for; she just enjoyed feeling reality slip between her fingers and fall away like sand.
When she was ten, Mal's father was assassinated. They never found out if he was killed by a rival family or just someone who'd realized Mikuláš had been thirty years old for ten years. Regardless, Záviš, then sixteen, was thrust into the position of patriarch and became more paranoid of assassination with every passing day, while Zinaida's grief took her in the opposite direction and made her careless. She started stealing in broad daylight in the middle of the street, and even though it wasn't immediately obvious to the casual observer what was happening when she stole, there was a little too much deadly coincidence floating around, and rumors started to fly about Zinaida, the mad witch.
On the morning of Mal's eleventh birthday, she walked to her mother's room to say good morning, hoping for presents, and found her halfway through the theft of an elderly servant's entire life force. While she recognized the magic as the same as her own, she refused to acknowledge it as harmful and fled before the servant died. She never saw him again, and when her mother gave her a little bottle of colored sand, she opened the cork and got her first taste of someone else's life - not enough to freeze her age, but more than enough to refresh her and put the memory of the moments before the servant's death out of her mind. From that point on, her mother gave her regular, if small, doses of lifetimes, getting her acclimatized to what was meant to be her path to immortality.
Mal didn't acknowledge to herself what she had seen for years, continuing with her training and avoiding her mother and brothers as much as possible. Around age thirteen, after a particularly violent argument with Zinaida and overhearing the rumors of a collection of servants, she started keeping track of rapid deaths in the larger City and following her mother's movements, mostly out of spite, but gradually realized that her suspicions were correct: her mother was in the habit of killing people for profit.
She'd never been particularly close to anyone in her family, but that was the last straw. She packed a bag (not a very good bag, being full of the things thirteen-year-olds think they'll need when they run away) and left, hiding in narrow alleys until she was entirely detoxed. The process took two months and was accompanied not only by standard withdrawal symptoms, but by extremely vivid hallucinations, none of which she remembered by the time she was fully recovered. (It's worth pointing out that she never stopped craving life. Like any chemical or psychological addiction, she'd always want it. She simply replaced the need with other things - chain-smoking, mostly, and heavy doses of caffeine in times of great stress.)
When she returned home, she was half-heartedly berated by her mother for having left, but when Zinaida found out that Mal had no intention of stealing or absorbing life again, she disowned her on the spot. Mal was given two hours to gather her belongings and leave. She was out in forty-five minutes.
Between the ages of fourteen and nineteen, Mal starved, begged, and stole in turns. The reality of the average plebeian's life in the Twin City was a major shock, but it only strengthened her resolve to get as far away from her family and their magic as possible. In a tongue-in-cheek thumbing of the nose to her mother, she began bartering her own version of household charms, mostly repair jobs. As her mother grew more and more careless in her hunts, the name Malova became one surrounded with hazy suspicion, and as a result Mal began to go by Milena, although she still expected people to call her Mal.
By the time she was eighteen, the deaths she recognized as her mother's handiwork were increasing exponentially, and she began to notice deaths that she suspected were Záviš and Čeněk's. People were talking about the Malovas, too, and beginning to recognize them as a genuine threat, although no one spoke about it too terribly loudly out of fear. Mal began to join in these conversations, both virtually and in person, and leaked information as carefully as she could without giving away her identity. It will be just after her nineteenth birthday that Mal experiences the flatline hallucination.
Residence/Job: She's couch-hopping, or the Ark equivalent, hiding in the homes of people who've been victimized by her family. When she needs goods, she'll make little household spells and trade them on street corners for food and supplies. Occasionally she'll take odd jobs; past jobs have included dishwasher, barista, and waitress. (Glamour is important, clearly.) She never lasts at these jobs more than a week or two.
Skills/Powers: Mal's power is magic, or more specifically, reality manipulation. As a general rule, she will only use her magic in order to manipulate small things. For example, she will make a spell to fix a leaky roof or mend a broken step, but she will not meddle with time, life, or probability unless she is extremely hard-pressed. On a daily basis, she will use her magic for two things: a) household spells for barter, and b) manipulation of her own appearance, for safety's sake.
She was also partially trained as a thief of life, like her parents, and still has access to those skills, although she will only use them if her life is in immediate peril. Since she is only partially trained, she is significantly weaker than her parents are and can only take days or weeks at a time; she also must be within fifty meters of a target in order to steal, twenty meters in VR. The immediate effect on the targeted party is extreme fatigue, dizziness, nausea, and blackouts. She can also return time to targeted parties, with no ill effects. As a result, even if she does steal someone's life, she'll only do so for as long as it takes her to get away, returning the time when she's out of harm's way. Further, since she is partially trained, there are side effects of zoiklepty's use for her as well. While the very beginning of any theft is a rush, Mal has abstained from such piracy for so long that she'll quickly be overcome by symptoms similar to the target's, most notably nausea and dizziness. Not to mention the fact that if she does take someone's life, even temporarily, she will have to start the detox process all over again, which is probably the most unpleasant thing she's ever done in her life.
As far as other skills, Mal is generally mediocre at most things. She's intelligent but not brilliant (and thinks she's much smarter than she is), capable of taking care of herself in a fight but not terribly strong, and only slightly above average in network literacy. She was privately educated by family tutors and as a result came to the streets knowing a lot about history and only a little about how to function in the real world. She's learned a lot in a short time, but still has a ways to go. Basically, she's street smart, but not enough to keep her mouth shut when she should. Pride will always trip her up because she thinks she's a lot more capable than she actually is.
Resources: Extremely limited. She is entirely cut off from her family's wealth and, since she doesn't have a regular job, she is always low on supplies. As stated above, she generally gets by on the goodwill of others and the trades she's able to make.
IV. SAMPLE
Arrival: There's no ceiling; it's just cloth instead, draped far too close to Mal's face. As she surfaces, she hears the susurrus of tiny voices and reaches out to push the girls away without looking at them. Her fingers snag in dirty, tangled hair by accident, and the child squeals and follows her sisters out.
"Thought you were dead!"
Her head is pounding. Why is she staying with a family full of children? Sticky, grubby children, poking at her while she sleeps, going through her things, and it's dangerous, isn't it, children in a war zone -
There is a long moment of disorientation and overwhelming nausea, endless seconds when she can't remember which name is hers and which name is a figment of network overstimulation. The tent above her head could belong to either of them.
She peels the electrode off the side of her head and stares at it, then throws it out through a rip in the cloth. There it is, then. All fake. Just bits and bytes and cracked parts of the brain that you're not supposed to look at when you're not dreaming. Nothing to worry about. There's thousands of things to worry about, so she orders herself to put this aside.
Never mind the fact that years of memories have slid in beside the real ones, or the fact that she remembers detoxing twice and the taste of copper on her tongue. A mansion blends with a castle in her mind before blurrily separating.
She takes her pulse - normal - feels her forehead - nothing out of the ordinary there, either.
A brief rush of common sense and annoying practicality has her crawling out of the front of the tent into the adjacent tent, what she associates with a dining room, although she doubts this family has ever seen or even heard of a dining room. Or a room. They live in a moldly blanket fort, really. Not that she'll tell them.
The girls are clustered around a loaf of dry bread, sitting frog-like with their knobbly knees pointing up in the air, their toes clutching the damp blankets that constitute a floor. Their mother pushes her hair out of her face and gives a tired smile. Mal wonders when she woke up this morning - is it morning? - and realizes she can't remember the woman's name.
She says a gracious, rehearsed farewell, and the poor woman apparently thinks it's genuine, that she hasn't done this a thousand times before. "Good luck," she says, and Mal gives a wide, white smile. The mother's teeth are yellow. She'll bring them food one of these days.
They remind her of refugees, she thinks as she slides out of the tent for good and hops down into the street - the refugees she saw in VR, scuttling down a wide, dusty road like nothing she'd ever seen in the Twin City. She recalls protesting, demanding a good answer. It's a little hilarious. Like answers just fall out of the air into one's lap.
The hunger, at least, was not terribly unfamiliar. Ooh, treacherous thought. She taps the box of smokes in her pocket nervously and puts that thought away. All a bit too much for this morning. (Morning? She can never tell, this far down the layers of life in the City, although now she's out of the tents things are a little clearer. She thinks it's morning.) Thinning shoes scuff on the rough street and she huffs at all this dwelling. Funny thing, she was a sidekick in the hero dream. Here, in the real world, well. She just is.
And she has plenty to do. Twenty minutes, she thinks, and then you jack in again. Might as well. There's an empire to bring down, after all.
After that, maybe, just maybe, she'll do a bit of research on vampires. Old words, she thinks, and remembers the mountains she'd seen - not twisted and mad like the Teeth, but rolling and nearly gentle, capped in snow. She squashes wistfulness before it can grow. Nothing to miss. All of this, from corner hawkers to empty-eyed children at the ends of alleys to the shit floating at the very, very top - this is home.
The girls, who have followed her outside, are surprised to see her turn to them and give another dazzling smile. "I'll be back," she says, and gives a two-finger salute.
As they scuttle back inside, she mutters, "Not likely," and walks away without looking back.
Name (or internet handle): Anne
Age: 21
Contact: trustmeimthe AT yahoo;
Current characters in Road of 'Trode: N/A
II: CHARACTER INFO
Name: Maladicta von Borogravia[1]
Dreamwidth Username:
deshabilleFandom: Monstrous Regiment [Discworld series]
Image: here!
Age/Appearance: Apparently 19-ish, real age never stated. Mal is a Discworld vampire, and as such she maintains certain vampiric standards. She is pale, slim, average height, and gray-eyed. Her hair is black and cut stylishly short. Her clothes are always neat. She has abnormally, though not supernaturally, long canines. Overall, she strikes one as androgynous enough that her confidence allows her to portray herself however she desires.
Wiki Links: No such thing, alas. Here's a history, though!
On the Disc – an aggressively whimsical semi-parallel version of Earth – there was a country called Borogravia. Borogravia was proud; Borogravia had a mad god (Nuggan) and a dead duchess, both of whom gave a great degree of false hope to a poor and barren nation; Borogravia made war. For years and years, because it could, until there was nothing but war in Borogravia, and it had run out of sons. When a country that loves war runs out of sons, and when propaganda stops working because of that nasty tendency of people to come back from war with fewer arms and legs than they left with, those who enter into warfare tend to have very individual motivations. In the case of what came to be termed in Borogravia the Monstrous Regiment, they were also not sons.
Eight young women cut off their hair, put on trousers, and joined the army to fight for the glory of the Motherland!!, except not really, because generally they were running away from rather than towards something. Maladicta certainly was. Tired of not getting respect from her family (because female vampires are meant to be sexy, not clever or strong or independent), Mal joined the Ins-and-Outs and quickly detected that her idea was not particularly original. She was surrounded by women.
Unfortunately, these eight women were the last recruits of the current war with Zlobenia, and as such were given shoddy equipment and told to go to the front lines posthaste. Before this could happen, however, the recruiting corporal (name of Strappi), a political spy for the highest Borogravian military authority, became so thrilled at the idea of heading to the front lines that he pissed himself and deserted, significant largely because a) he gave away the squad's position to the nearby Zlobenian infantry, and b) he stole Mal's coffee. Mal really needed her coffee; without coffee she would kill for a cup of . . . well, blood. [See powers section]
But speaking of the Zlobenians: those plucky girls manage to capture and humiliate (that is, kick in the fork and strip) the infantry forces, although it might have interested them to know that Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia, the heir to the Borogravian throne and a major reason for the war's outbreak, happened to be in that infantry party . . . and was the one kicked in the fork . . . and actually became quite angry about it. Due to the exciting influence of the Free and Fair Press of city-state Ankh-Morpork, the story of Prince Heinrich's ultimate humiliation at the hands of a small group of green recruits quickly became a hot topic of conversation across the Disc and instantly changed political attitudes towards Borogravia from They are insane and must be stopped (possibly accurate) to They are plucky underdogs and we should support them.
Due to confusing verbal and tactical maneuvering by the Ins-and-Outs' tremendously inexperienced Lieutenant Blouse, the regiment ultimately ended up making its way to Kneck Keep, a vital Borogravian stronghold which had been taken over by Zlobenians. Along this trip, the lack of coffee became an issue. Having substituted her addiction to human blood for an addiction to coffee, Mal began experiencing flashsides, or hallucinations of alternate realities – in this case, of the Vietnam War. As the squad made its way to the Keep, Mal got so close to reverting to her original addiction and attacking one of her fellow soldiers that she nearly had to be staked through the heart – until a blessed bag of beans dropped from the sky and nearly concussed her.[2]
An unconscious yet thoroughly caffeinated Mal (she sucked the caffeine directly from the beans through the bag, which is apparently a thing you can do if you're desperate enough) was left outside the Keep with their Sergeant Jackrum while the others disguised themselves as washerwomen to get inside the fortress. Mal was quickly caught and imprisoned by Zlobenians within the Keep; the others quickly followed (partially because no one believed they were actually women). After a complex series of power shifts within the Keep, the Borogravians retook it and, in their turn, became tremendously offended at the presence of women within their army, despite the fact that the squad (sans Mal, who was still unconscious) had freed them from their cells.
A court-martial was called – but not officially, since a court-martial is only for proper (that is, male) soldiers - and the top brass of Borogravia was about to disregard the squad's achievements and send them home when Sergeant Jackrum returned and revealed that about, oh, one third of the entire military was of the female persuasion. Halfway through this exciting development, the semi-divine Duchess of Borogravia possessed one of the recruits and demanded that Borogravia let go of her and of Nuggan and that the generals return home to save their people form starvation.
It was only after this, in the confusing and frequently condescending peace negotiations, that Mal revealed that she was really Maladicta. This was met with a general lack of offense from the squad, and everyone was sent home with a pat on the back and a none-too-subtle hint not to come back. Mal disappeared, floating around the country aimlessly, never going home and never staying in one place for too long. The female generals stayed silent about their identities. A fragile peace was brokered.
And then, a few months later, broken again. Borogravia went to war one more time. And Corporal Maladicta joined Sergeant Polly Perks serving openly in the Ins-and-Outs as women, whether the brass liked it or not.
[1] Her last name is never stated in canon. This last name was created following the pattern of Überwaldean vampires with the surname "von Überwald". So, yes.
[2] It is worth pointing out that these were not actually divine beans. They had been delivered by the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, which for various complicated and above all political reasons had a presence within Kneck Keep. They were supposed to be on Zlobenia's side, sort of, but mostly the commander of the Watch, Sam Vimes, just liked the squad. Hence hand-delivery of beans.
Personality: Raised in the vampiric aristocracy, Mal was well-educated according to a very specific definition of education. She is literate, quite intelligent, and articulate. Perhaps most importantly for a vampire, she is charming and quick-witted. She can outsmart most of her peers in the army by talking circles around them. She's quick with a jibe, although they are always cleverly underhanded, and with a comeback; she is not easily offended, which is a pro considering the fact that she is canonically surrounded by people who understand neither her species nor her gender.
As charming as she is, though, her haughtiness is often overwhelming. Polly Perks "objects to [her] permanent expression of effortless superiority," which she maintains at all times except when she is going through coffee withdrawals. Part of this is genuine and part is a defense mechanism. Mal does consider herself smarter than her peers and makes an effort to know things about them that give her an advantage. She may use such an advantage if it's helpful to her. However, she also comes from a family in which her skills and intelligence were ignored; upon arriving in the army, she immediately establishes herself as cleverer, faster, and stronger than the other recruits as a defense mechanism. This speaks to her underlying insecurity, which has multiple facets. First, she is a vampire trying to live without blood, which, in a way, is denying her own identity; on the other hand, she has entirely divorced herself from vampire culture because she considers it to be unnecessarily focused on female sexuality rather than power and because she does not feel taken seriously within that culture. She is unable to articulate this entirely clearly, although she does try to confide in Polly towards the end of Monstrous Regiment. Second (and relatedly), she constantly lives in fear of losing control of herself and hurting someone she cares about, which will be discussed in more detail later. Finally, and simply, she is very young and doesn't really understand who she is yet. She joined the army on a whim and found in it a career; she didn't choose it. So up until now she's relied largely on chance and used bluster to appear more directed than she actually is.
During the course of Monstrous Regiment, Mal develops feelings of loyalty for the first time, not to her country or to the army but to the other recruits, most likely as a result of their surprising loyalty to her. The fact that the entirety of the Ins-and-Outs stuck together and protested the status quo, despite their vastly different motivations and goals and the chances they had to opt out of confrontation, must have been surprising to someone who'd grown up in a strictly traditional aristocratic family in which nobody rocked the boat, or indeed ever wanted to. Further, the fact that her fellow recruits tried to save her during her withdrawals rather than immediately staking her in the heart led her to trust them with her life. Given that the entire novel takes place over only a few days, all of this implies that Mal is likely to become extremely loyal extremely quickly, particularly in a high-stress scenario.
Mal is a loudmouth. She is usually the first to protest a perceived injustice, as when the recruits witnessed a large group of fleeing refugees and were told to forget about it. While she often does not act on her protestations, her words can spur others to action, as often was the case when she and Polly worked together.
In the Discworld, vampires don't exactly drink blood for sustenance; they're addicted to it like a drug (although they do need some sort of blood on a regular basis to survive, it can be animal blood in very small amounts; Mal shows no signs of needing any blood whatsoever in Monstrous Regiment). In fact, the Überwald League of Temperance, or Black Ribboners, is a group analogous to Alcoholics Anonymous, which encourages its members to abstain from blood. Many vampires choose to simply replace one addiction with another. Mal's new addiction is coffee. When she doesn't have any in canon, as happens while the regiment is on the move, she reverts back to her original addiction and craves blood. When she reverts her cravings are so intense that she can't control herself; however, she is self-aware enough to realize that she's a danger to others. In the interim period while the effects of the coffee are wearing off, she becomes completely unaware of her surroundings and experiences "flashsides," or flashes of alternate realities. In Monstrous Regiment, she gets flashsides of the Vietnam War. During flashsides, Mal is entirely unaware that her original reality ever existed.
Reason for playing: Mal has always intrigued me as a character because, like all Black Ribboners, she is actively pretending not to be this big, scary, powerful, dangerous being in order not to be hunted down and killed. However, Mal strikes me as more complex than that for several reasons: one, because she is so full of swagger and yet really quite young and unsure of herself, as is revealed towards the end of Monstrous Regiment, adding still more layers of contradiction to her identity; and two, because she is so heavily influenced by those around her. Her experience in the army would have been an entirely different one had she not been surrounded by strong personalities such as Polly's and Jackrum's. Because she is so young and her identity is still in flux, I'm really fascinated by the prospect of playing her in an AU setting where she can be surrounded by radically different characters and settings than she had experience with in her canon. Finally, the juxtaposition of the semi-medieval setting of Discworld and the futuristic/cyberpunk-y world of the Ark will be really fun to play with, I think.
III. AU INFO
Name: Vlasta "Mal" Malova; she often goes by the alias Milena Tichý
Age/Appearance: 19, same general appearance - pale, suave, average height. She tends to change specifics of her appearance on a regular basis - rarely her height or build, but specifics of her facial structure and especially accessories. Basically, when needed, she camouflages herself in order to mesh with whatever group she is currently interacting with. She tends towards dark, simple clothes, although they're not as good quality as they were when she lived with her family.
History: Vlasta Malova is the daughter of Zinaida and Mikuláš Malova, the heads of one of the few extremely well-to-do families in the Twin City. Born into an island of pure opulence within the squalor of the City, Mal grew up with the best that could possibly be provided for her. She was told by her parents from a young age that the Malovas were a generous family, philanthropists, even, and it was true that they did donate food and so forth to certain visible members of the more photogenic poor. No one was ever quite sure how they maintained their wealth and power, but people said it was because they were respected and loved.
The real reason they could afford to give so much away was that Zinaida and Mikuláš's true business was trading in black market black magic. The Malovas, as it turned out, specialized in the piracy of life force, zoiklepty, manipulation of the fabric of reality in the Ark so that months, years, even decades were transferred from one person to another. They targeted the young and strong, pulling the life from them and storing it in small winged statuettes to sell to the old and infirm, while the targets suddenly withered and died, their sudden illness blamed on the poor quality of life in the City. The Malovas nurtured an empire of exorbitantly inflated trade, selling weeks at a time to desperate people on the brink of death in exchange for either half that time in exchange for food, goods, and often servitude. Those in the Malovas' service were expected to be on call at any time to do all the nasty things they weren't willing to do themselves. It was common for targets to be asked to threaten, torture, or assassinate a member of a rival in the black market. If they didn't, their life was taken back with a twist of Zinaida's fingers.
However, the biggest secret of zoiklepty was that there was no upper limit. You couldn't ever have too much life force; you couldn't overdose. It was, in short, the secret to immortality, and the elder Malovas split a healthy twenty-five-year-old a day in order to remain a vibrant, well-preserved thirty-ish each.
Mal's childhood was uneventful, if lonely, for the most part. Her two elder brothers, Záviš and Čeněk, captured most of her parents' attention; Záviš, the oldest, was to take over the family business after Mikuláš retired, and Čeněk was next in line and so had to be trained as if he'd take over one day, too. Mal, who refused to answer to Vlasta, first because she couldn't pronounce it and later out of habit and stubbornness, was a daughter, extraneous and generally ignored. When one of her parents did pay attention to her, it was her mother, who would subject her to grueling training sessions in family magic - because even if she was a girl, she'd have to use it some day if she wanted to live forever. Not that Mal was ever told what the magic was used for; she just enjoyed feeling reality slip between her fingers and fall away like sand.
When she was ten, Mal's father was assassinated. They never found out if he was killed by a rival family or just someone who'd realized Mikuláš had been thirty years old for ten years. Regardless, Záviš, then sixteen, was thrust into the position of patriarch and became more paranoid of assassination with every passing day, while Zinaida's grief took her in the opposite direction and made her careless. She started stealing in broad daylight in the middle of the street, and even though it wasn't immediately obvious to the casual observer what was happening when she stole, there was a little too much deadly coincidence floating around, and rumors started to fly about Zinaida, the mad witch.
On the morning of Mal's eleventh birthday, she walked to her mother's room to say good morning, hoping for presents, and found her halfway through the theft of an elderly servant's entire life force. While she recognized the magic as the same as her own, she refused to acknowledge it as harmful and fled before the servant died. She never saw him again, and when her mother gave her a little bottle of colored sand, she opened the cork and got her first taste of someone else's life - not enough to freeze her age, but more than enough to refresh her and put the memory of the moments before the servant's death out of her mind. From that point on, her mother gave her regular, if small, doses of lifetimes, getting her acclimatized to what was meant to be her path to immortality.
Mal didn't acknowledge to herself what she had seen for years, continuing with her training and avoiding her mother and brothers as much as possible. Around age thirteen, after a particularly violent argument with Zinaida and overhearing the rumors of a collection of servants, she started keeping track of rapid deaths in the larger City and following her mother's movements, mostly out of spite, but gradually realized that her suspicions were correct: her mother was in the habit of killing people for profit.
She'd never been particularly close to anyone in her family, but that was the last straw. She packed a bag (not a very good bag, being full of the things thirteen-year-olds think they'll need when they run away) and left, hiding in narrow alleys until she was entirely detoxed. The process took two months and was accompanied not only by standard withdrawal symptoms, but by extremely vivid hallucinations, none of which she remembered by the time she was fully recovered. (It's worth pointing out that she never stopped craving life. Like any chemical or psychological addiction, she'd always want it. She simply replaced the need with other things - chain-smoking, mostly, and heavy doses of caffeine in times of great stress.)
When she returned home, she was half-heartedly berated by her mother for having left, but when Zinaida found out that Mal had no intention of stealing or absorbing life again, she disowned her on the spot. Mal was given two hours to gather her belongings and leave. She was out in forty-five minutes.
Between the ages of fourteen and nineteen, Mal starved, begged, and stole in turns. The reality of the average plebeian's life in the Twin City was a major shock, but it only strengthened her resolve to get as far away from her family and their magic as possible. In a tongue-in-cheek thumbing of the nose to her mother, she began bartering her own version of household charms, mostly repair jobs. As her mother grew more and more careless in her hunts, the name Malova became one surrounded with hazy suspicion, and as a result Mal began to go by Milena, although she still expected people to call her Mal.
By the time she was eighteen, the deaths she recognized as her mother's handiwork were increasing exponentially, and she began to notice deaths that she suspected were Záviš and Čeněk's. People were talking about the Malovas, too, and beginning to recognize them as a genuine threat, although no one spoke about it too terribly loudly out of fear. Mal began to join in these conversations, both virtually and in person, and leaked information as carefully as she could without giving away her identity. It will be just after her nineteenth birthday that Mal experiences the flatline hallucination.
Residence/Job: She's couch-hopping, or the Ark equivalent, hiding in the homes of people who've been victimized by her family. When she needs goods, she'll make little household spells and trade them on street corners for food and supplies. Occasionally she'll take odd jobs; past jobs have included dishwasher, barista, and waitress. (Glamour is important, clearly.) She never lasts at these jobs more than a week or two.
Skills/Powers: Mal's power is magic, or more specifically, reality manipulation. As a general rule, she will only use her magic in order to manipulate small things. For example, she will make a spell to fix a leaky roof or mend a broken step, but she will not meddle with time, life, or probability unless she is extremely hard-pressed. On a daily basis, she will use her magic for two things: a) household spells for barter, and b) manipulation of her own appearance, for safety's sake.
She was also partially trained as a thief of life, like her parents, and still has access to those skills, although she will only use them if her life is in immediate peril. Since she is only partially trained, she is significantly weaker than her parents are and can only take days or weeks at a time; she also must be within fifty meters of a target in order to steal, twenty meters in VR. The immediate effect on the targeted party is extreme fatigue, dizziness, nausea, and blackouts. She can also return time to targeted parties, with no ill effects. As a result, even if she does steal someone's life, she'll only do so for as long as it takes her to get away, returning the time when she's out of harm's way. Further, since she is partially trained, there are side effects of zoiklepty's use for her as well. While the very beginning of any theft is a rush, Mal has abstained from such piracy for so long that she'll quickly be overcome by symptoms similar to the target's, most notably nausea and dizziness. Not to mention the fact that if she does take someone's life, even temporarily, she will have to start the detox process all over again, which is probably the most unpleasant thing she's ever done in her life.
As far as other skills, Mal is generally mediocre at most things. She's intelligent but not brilliant (and thinks she's much smarter than she is), capable of taking care of herself in a fight but not terribly strong, and only slightly above average in network literacy. She was privately educated by family tutors and as a result came to the streets knowing a lot about history and only a little about how to function in the real world. She's learned a lot in a short time, but still has a ways to go. Basically, she's street smart, but not enough to keep her mouth shut when she should. Pride will always trip her up because she thinks she's a lot more capable than she actually is.
Resources: Extremely limited. She is entirely cut off from her family's wealth and, since she doesn't have a regular job, she is always low on supplies. As stated above, she generally gets by on the goodwill of others and the trades she's able to make.
IV. SAMPLE
Arrival: There's no ceiling; it's just cloth instead, draped far too close to Mal's face. As she surfaces, she hears the susurrus of tiny voices and reaches out to push the girls away without looking at them. Her fingers snag in dirty, tangled hair by accident, and the child squeals and follows her sisters out.
"Thought you were dead!"
Her head is pounding. Why is she staying with a family full of children? Sticky, grubby children, poking at her while she sleeps, going through her things, and it's dangerous, isn't it, children in a war zone -
There is a long moment of disorientation and overwhelming nausea, endless seconds when she can't remember which name is hers and which name is a figment of network overstimulation. The tent above her head could belong to either of them.
She peels the electrode off the side of her head and stares at it, then throws it out through a rip in the cloth. There it is, then. All fake. Just bits and bytes and cracked parts of the brain that you're not supposed to look at when you're not dreaming. Nothing to worry about. There's thousands of things to worry about, so she orders herself to put this aside.
Never mind the fact that years of memories have slid in beside the real ones, or the fact that she remembers detoxing twice and the taste of copper on her tongue. A mansion blends with a castle in her mind before blurrily separating.
She takes her pulse - normal - feels her forehead - nothing out of the ordinary there, either.
A brief rush of common sense and annoying practicality has her crawling out of the front of the tent into the adjacent tent, what she associates with a dining room, although she doubts this family has ever seen or even heard of a dining room. Or a room. They live in a moldly blanket fort, really. Not that she'll tell them.
The girls are clustered around a loaf of dry bread, sitting frog-like with their knobbly knees pointing up in the air, their toes clutching the damp blankets that constitute a floor. Their mother pushes her hair out of her face and gives a tired smile. Mal wonders when she woke up this morning - is it morning? - and realizes she can't remember the woman's name.
She says a gracious, rehearsed farewell, and the poor woman apparently thinks it's genuine, that she hasn't done this a thousand times before. "Good luck," she says, and Mal gives a wide, white smile. The mother's teeth are yellow. She'll bring them food one of these days.
They remind her of refugees, she thinks as she slides out of the tent for good and hops down into the street - the refugees she saw in VR, scuttling down a wide, dusty road like nothing she'd ever seen in the Twin City. She recalls protesting, demanding a good answer. It's a little hilarious. Like answers just fall out of the air into one's lap.
The hunger, at least, was not terribly unfamiliar. Ooh, treacherous thought. She taps the box of smokes in her pocket nervously and puts that thought away. All a bit too much for this morning. (Morning? She can never tell, this far down the layers of life in the City, although now she's out of the tents things are a little clearer. She thinks it's morning.) Thinning shoes scuff on the rough street and she huffs at all this dwelling. Funny thing, she was a sidekick in the hero dream. Here, in the real world, well. She just is.
And she has plenty to do. Twenty minutes, she thinks, and then you jack in again. Might as well. There's an empire to bring down, after all.
After that, maybe, just maybe, she'll do a bit of research on vampires. Old words, she thinks, and remembers the mountains she'd seen - not twisted and mad like the Teeth, but rolling and nearly gentle, capped in snow. She squashes wistfulness before it can grow. Nothing to miss. All of this, from corner hawkers to empty-eyed children at the ends of alleys to the shit floating at the very, very top - this is home.
The girls, who have followed her outside, are surprised to see her turn to them and give another dazzling smile. "I'll be back," she says, and gives a two-finger salute.
As they scuttle back inside, she mutters, "Not likely," and walks away without looking back.