Name
Information
Name	Lou
Gender	Nonbinary
Age	Died 23ish, now 300ish
Height	5'2"
World	Mary Sue AU
Occupation	Vampire

Personality

Initially, Lou cones across confident, arrogant, and slick, as any self-respecting vampire should. However, this façade crumbles upon getting to know them literally at all or catching them off guard. Underneath, Lou is deeply lonely and struggles with serious attachment anxiety and obsessiveness.

Having lived more or less alone in a castle-become-university and confined to the old perimeter of the castle grounds by a curse, they aren't particularly well-adjusted. After a few centuries, even reading every book in the university library multiple times and sitting in on lectures as a "student" gets old, and a social life is a hard thing to maintain, as a vampire. 

All of this along with some Tragic Backstory™ and personality in general means Lou tends toward depression, and has been known to spend months at a time brooding at the bottom of a well. They can and do also do what any depressed person wishes they could do sometimes - go to bed and sleep for a few years.

Lou isn't used to anyone being able to disagree with them or see past their vampiric illusions, and is thus instantly smitten with the first person who calls them a bitch to their face.

Appearance

Glamor - Lou looks like their human form, but with a much greater air of confidence and a considerably flashier presentation. Lou has pointed ears, styled curly hair, and unnaturally bright emerald green eyes, as well as dainty fangs behind their lips. They wear makeup, paint their neatly trimmed claws, use perfumes, and wear fine clothes (mostly stolen from the wealthy students at the university that was their home). They give the aura of lounging at all times, even when standing up, and bear an easy confidence and convincing tones.

Under the glamor - They are shaped more or less the same, but their skin is visibly gray, their eyes a little sunken, their clothes clearly older and shabbier. The green in their eyes looks sicklier, more like discolored flame than emeralds. Their fangs are much more pronounced. Even so, if well-fed, Lou doesn't look altogether terrible. 

If not recently fed, Lou's appearance takes on a hungry look, and a twitchy, irritable demeanor. The worse it gets, the more their undead traits show. Eyes and cheeks sink in, what little warmth was there drains from their now waxy-looking skin, talons grow, pupils turn to green pinpricks, and so on. 

Starving or enraged, their true nature shows. Their flesh pulls taut and partly mummified, their eyes completely sink into their eye sockets, their body distorts and posture hunches, claws and teeth grow long and untidy. 

Like most vampires of their sort, Lou can shapeshift between a few different forms - human, bat monster, animal (cat or small bat) - but because of the circumstances of Lou's turning, they cannot do this well. They can turn into a monstrous, oversized bat monster... for about thirty seconds, before their form collapses in on itself and they're stuck as a tiny, black fluffy thing halfway between an owl and a bat.

Relationships

Aphotis - Adoptive mother, raised them from infancy through adulthood and ultimately was forced to turn them.

Igor - The family doctor, meaning passed down through the family for who knows how long. One of Lou's tutors when they were alive, and helped them come to terms with and navigate their vampirism after their turning. Also Lou's only confidant for a long time.

Story

This originally started as "Mary Sue vampire romance AU" so the backstories and details are extra tragic to match. Any cliché is fully intentional.

As an infant, Lou's parents gave them as tithe to the local vampire queen, Aphotis, who was certainly expected to eat them. Under normal circumstances, she probably would have, too. Something stopped her, however - maybe a moment of weakness, maybe loneliness, maybe something else. Regardless, Aphotis took the child in and raised them as her own, with the assistance of human hired help (vampires can pay their workers too)

Lou grew up in the castle, surrounded by their adoptive mother's court of vampires and eccentric human nobles (it's very fashionable to be friends with a vampire, after all) and came to adulthood fully human. Aphotis had intended to give them the gift - and curse - of vampirism when they came of age, but the date came and went and she never even offered. Over time, it became clearer that she considered it more of a curse than a gift, and genuinely loved Lou too much to do this to them.

When Lou was in their mid 20s and truly fledging as a young socialite, the vampire hunters arrived, with an army. After weeks of fighting and heavy losses on both sides, the vampire court had been scattered and nearly wiped out. Still, Aphotis and her inner circle proved near impossible to bring down by normal means, slaughtering squads of mercenaries and professional hunters at a time and disappearing before a response could be organized. Then, the hunters found Lou.

Lou, still fully human, had been hiding in one of the castle's many secret rooms and passages, helping their mother in what indirect ways they could manage. The vampire hunters dragged them out, loudly proclaimed their capture, and hammered a stake through their human, mortal heart.

The bait worked, but the hunters had not anticipated the rage Aphotis would fly into, in her grief. In fully monstrous form, she massacred most of the hunters present, shrugging off their weapons and arcane traps, until she was alone with her adopted child. Desperate and despairing, Aphotis finally gave them the bite, and flooded their veins with her venom. Then, grievously wounded, Aphotis fled.

The remaining vampire hunters, not realizing an already dead person could be turned, threw Lou in a shallow grave and cast a protective ward on the entire castle grounds, preventing any undead thing from crossing its walls. In either direction.

Months or possibly years later, Lou dug themself free of their grave, extremely weak and confused. The castle groundskeeper and Aphotis's strange servant - Igor - helped them out and hid them in the family's huge crypt to recover and grow accustomed to their new existence.

In the time since, Lou has fed on the bandits, scavengers, builders, students, and otherwise that called the castle home over the couple of centuries since their death. They've had to be secretive and careful, avoiding alerting the people of the town nearby lest they summon vampire hunters again.

Trivia

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