Morgan was my character in the Broken Sword of Caine LARP. This is the background that I turned in for her.
Her childhood was relatively tame. She was a quiet child who learned to read at an early age, and enjoyed telling stories, either those she had read or those she had made up, to Liz and Tim. At least for the first five years of her life, she lived a moderately happy existence.
In reality, she saw Tim’s dying moments through his own eyes…
Somewhere nearby I/Tim hears the sound of breaking glass. Just ahead, and to the left. That’s the alley outside of my/Stephanie’s room. A bunch of bad boys helping someone climb through the first floor window. I/Tim opens my mouth and says "Stop!" The boys stop and look at me/Tim. I/Tim shouldn’t have said anything. I/Tim starts to back away, but they’re running towards me/Tim. They have knifes and pieces of broken glass in their hands. One of them rips the bag of presents away from me/Tim, and the packages go flying and hit the ground. As the boys begin to stab me, I/Tim sees the one present that mattered the most. The ring for mom/Liz. So that she can marry Tim and be happy again...
One afternoon, Morgan took a little longer coming home from school than usual. The flowers were just beginning to bloom, and she wanted to pick some for Maria and Liz. When she arrived at Maria’s apartment, the door was hanging wide open, the door frame battered and splintered near the lock. Maria’s body was sitting on the couch, her throat sliced open. Barely thinking, Morgan rushed to Maria’s side and blacked out again.
And for the second time in her life, Morgan saw the dying moments of a friend through her own eyes...
One evening, Cassie wasn’t home before the sun set. Sean tried to hide his concern, but as Morgan helped him start dinner, she could tell something was wrong. When the phone rang while Morgan was setting the table, she didn’t need to answer it to know that something bad had happened.
Morgan and Sean took a cab to the plant where Cassie worked. There had been a horrible fire that was just being extinguished. The firemen hadn’t been able to get in the building to find any bodies yet, but the outlook was grim. The temperatures had far exceeded those a normal human could withstand. Morgan wasn’t satisfied with that. She had to see the body herself. As she began to cry hysterically and run towards the building, she blacked out. This time, there was no vision of death from the victim’s eyes. This time, there was nothing.
When she woke up, she was on the couch at Sean and Cassie’s apartment. Sean was sitting nearby, looking as though he hadn’t slept all night. The firemen had searched the building all night and into the morning. They had found only remnants of the bodies, charred to the point where even dental identification was impossible. Cassie was dead. Morgan, still exhausted from her crying the night before, could only nod and hug Sean weakly. She waited until he went to sleep, and then left the apartment quietly.
By this point, Morgan was sure that her mere presence was poison to her friends. She continued on with school, remaining distant from her peers and her mother. After graduating from high school, she moved to Detroit to attend college. She found a small apartment above a bookstore, and got a job working nights in the bookstore. The bookstore was usually quiet at night, so Morgan was able to get her homework done and read a few interesting books in her spare time. Most of the patrons were college students, like herself, but there were also three women in their 30s who frequented the store. These women occasionally bought books, but usually just browsed, all the while casting knowing glances at Morgan, as if they knew all that she had been through.
Sean was thin to the point of emaciation, barely recognizable as his old self. The years had not been kind to him, and his once dark brown hair now showed strands of gray. He seemed as though he was no longer suffering, opening his eyes and watching Morgan as she approached his bed. The peaceful smile he gave her repulsed her for a moment, for in that smile, she saw that Sean was ready to let himself die. He flatlined as she reached his side. Trembling, she placed her hands over his eyes…
The walk back to her car seemed to stretch into an eternity. Just before she got there, she noticed someone standing near her car, as though they were waiting. Looking up, she saw the weird women from the store, and then nothing...
Morgan nodded, but whispered a single question. "Why not Sean?" Cassie’s previously smug look flickered for a moment. "I... I couldn’t save him." Now it was Morgan’s turn to falter momentarily, but she kept her composure and asked Cassie to proceed.
The next week was sheer torture. Morgan was, for once in her life, glad for her mostly deadened senses. The pain inside was constant, but at least there was little external pain. Only the strange noises that she heard from time to time bothered her, mainly because she could not identify them. One week after Morgan had watched Sean die, Cassie returned to her. She first showed Morgan a mirror, then her own true visage. As Cassie explained, she had died in the fire at the pharmaceutical plant. But she had been found by roving Sabbat vampires, who had Embraced her and instructed her in their ways. Now it was her turn to instruct Morgan in their ways.
For the next three months, Morgan learned as much as the pack was willing to teach her. Nathalie and Dori were amazed at her voracious appetite for knowledge, but Cassie simply marveled in the fact that Morgan’s Embrace had changed her so little. On conferring amongst themselves, the members of the pack knew how to determine Morgan’s worth. If she could successfully gather enough information on one of the other Sabbat of Detroit, without being caught, she would be given the Creation Rites.
Morgan started by following her quarry everywhere for a week, learning his patterns. The only time she lost sight of him was when he hunted. Troubled with this missing bit of knowledge, Morgan hit upon what seemed (after the fact) to be the obvious solution—she found one of his victims and tried to see the hapless soul’s demise. This being the first time she had attempted her "trick" as a Vampire, she was astounded by how well it worked. Shockingly, she discovered evidence of what her pack had suspected all along—her quarry was an Infernalist. Armed with this and some of his other secrets, revealed only through the death visions of his victims, she provided her pack with enough information to hand over the Infernalist to the Inquisition.
When asked about how she had gotten so much information, Morgan reluctantly shared her secret. She could feel Cassie’s uncomfortable stare on her as she mentioned that she had been able to do so since she was a child. After a moment’s pause, she met Cassie’s stare squarely, silently assuring Cassie that she had seen enough to know how Sean died. Cassie was the first of Morgan’s packmates to suggest that Morgan’s talents would be extremely valuable to the sect. Perhaps it would be best if Morgan left Detroit, and went somewhere where others could teach her more. Perhaps Montreal…
Morgan found Montreal precisely to her liking. The Librarians were willing to share their knowledge with her, and no one required her to form close friendships. She was simply one Cainite in an enormous city, and the freedom it granted her was priceless. The only person she formed a close relationship with was a Tzimisce by the name of Ariadne, who instructed her in the tenets of the Path of Lilith. The two kept their friendship quiet, as Ariadne had fallen out of favor with the Librarians several years previous, and did not want to diminish Morgan’s chances to learn from them. True to Morgan’s belief that anyone who got too close to her was doomed, Ariadne was destroyed in 1999 by fanatical members of the Sabbat who believed some of Ariadne’s utterances, based on the teachings of the Path of Lilith, were too heretical to be tolerated. By this point, Morgan could tell that such winds would soon blow her direction, so she quietly left for Philadelphia.
While certainly not instrumental in the attacks on Camarilla strongholds of the East Coast, Morgan’s unusual talents provided some packs with the extra edge they needed to topple Camarilla resistance. The spirits of deceased ghouls could provide much information to someone who knew how to talk to them, and those packs who had been entrusted with the knowledge of Morgan’s abilities profited by their knowledge. Once all the dust had died down, however, Morgan grew restless. Philadelphia was not home, nor were any of the other cities in which she had resided. She needed to find somewhere new, where there would be new things to learn. Catching a ride with a nomadic pack headed west, Morgan made it as far as Chicago before the pack’s luck ran out at the hands of the Scourge of Chicago. On her own, she worked her way slowly south, arriving in St. Louis shortly after the beginning of 2001. Something about the city seemed to call to her, although she could not identify what it was. But at least for the moment, it would be home.
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