Carna

Clan

Tremere

Generation

8th generation

Role

Tremere Primogen

City

Milwaukee

She was born in 1417. A peasant girl in an unnamed village somewhere in Europe, probably France or the Low Countries given what followed. Eighteen years of a life defined by labor, subsistence, and the absolute authority of the local lord. The details of that mortal existence are irrelevant to Carna now. She has had 573 years to forget them.

Prince Bourdona was Tremere. He ruled his domain from a castle staffed with beautiful women drawn from the surrounding villages, kept as herd and decoration. When he saw the peasant girl, he told her she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. It was a lie. His castle was full of women he had said the same thing to. She believed him because she was eighteen and had never been told she was worth anything at all.

What followed was not love. At best it was a mockery of mortal love. Bourdona hit her. Fed on her. Used her as blood supply and object. When he grew bored, he stopped feeding on her and selected another beauty from the herd. She remained in the castle, discarded but not released, watching her replacement receive the same treatment she had endured.

One night Bourdona came to her room in a fury directed at his hidden masters in the Tremere hierarchy. Vienna had demanded something he refused to give, or denied him something he believed he deserved. In his rage, he Embraced her. Not out of affection. As an act of spite against the Clan: “They have never had a female in their ranks.” She was a weapon aimed at the Pyramid, made from the body of a girl he had already broken.

They took her to Vienna. The Tremere Blood Bond was applied. The Clan’s hierarchy, uniformly male, despised her on principle. Bourdona abandoned her the night the Bond took hold. He left the Clan entirely and was never seen again. Her sire vanished, and the organization that owned her blood regarded her as an insult to their order.

Carna survived by excelling. She mastered Thaumaturgy with a discipline that her male peers could not dismiss, though they tried. She climbed. She proved herself in the only currency the Tremere respected: results. At some point she held praxis over Marseille, a posting that suggests Vienna found her useful enough to place in a position of real authority despite their institutional contempt for her gender.

Six centuries produced a pattern she cannot break. “Since then I have had many lovers. They always do the same things. First they love me, but when I return their love they no longer desire me. Then they are killed.” The Bourdona template repeats with mechanical precision. She finds someone who pursues her, opens herself to the relationship, watches the interest die the moment reciprocity appears, and then the lover dies. Whether she kills them or circumstances arrange the death is ambiguous and probably varies.

By the present nights in Milwaukee, Carna is over 570 years old and operating at Humanity 1. The sweetness is calculated. The competence is real. The interior is a locked room where a peasant girl is still waiting for the Prince who told her she was beautiful to come back and mean it.