Name: Beryl Koenig
Species: Vampire
Age: 167, looks 20-something
Physical Description: Medium height, pale, slender, with curly black hair and intense green eyes. Always dressed and made up at the height of fashion, whatever that happens to be at the moment. Generally conceals the glassy quality of vampire skin under carefully-applied makeup.

Personality: Despite her relative youth, Beryl has a reputation among other vampires for cold-blooded cruelty. She has no reputation among humans, because humans who get close to her tend to die quickly. She prefers to eat twice a week, more if she can get it. Her dedication to fashion and blending in with humanity is a form of predatory camouflage, not any yearning to be mortal again.

Beryl doesn't know a lot of things a vampire is supposed to know. Her maker died shortly after turning her, and she hasn't gone looking for friends among the other vampires. She considers herself to be naturally cautious, although her idea of 'caution' is to leave an area if she feels there's anything that might be a serious threat to her. This sometimes causes other vampires to assume she's a coward, because she will sometimes leave even if she could easily defeat the competition. Her favorite food is vampire hunters.

Recently, Beryl has been considering either finding or founding a clan. She's not precisely lonely, but she's tired of having to keep moving to avoid trouble, and feels that a clan would give some security.
Affiliations: Beryl's maker is dead, and she has no friends or minions.
Personal Weaknesses: Beryl will never turn down an opportunity to hunt a vampire hunter, even at the risk of life and limb. She doesn't know much about being a vampire, except that she has to drink blood and avoid sunlight and that other vampires usually have complicated clan systems. She doesn't make friends easily.
Quirks: Beryl is a movie fanatic. She's seen pretty much every movie ever made in Hollywood, and many from other places.

History: Beryl was born in Virginia, and reached adulthood just in time for the Civil War to start. Soldiers of both sides ransacked her family's farm and took liberties with the women at various times. She met her Maker after one such incident, when a mysterious man arrived and attacked several soldiers. Beryl 'helped' him by picking up a discarded sword and swinging wildly at the backs of the distracted soldiers. The mystery man rewarded the attempt at assistance by turning the attractive, mostly nude, blood-spattered girl into a vampire. Unfortunately for him, he neglected to explain what he was doing first, and Beryl had just discovered she could fight back against her assailants. In a last desperate move as she felt herself dying, Beryl stabbed him in the back with a kitchen knife. It didn't kill him, but it left him incapacitated long enough for her to shove him into the fire with the strength granted by hysteria.

Not having anyone to explain things to her, Beryl was understandably confused about suddenly craving blood and not being able to walk in the sunlight, and for several years she haunted caves and abandoned buildings, killing anyone unlucky enough to come her way. An abandoned library, however, provided collections of poetry that explained things more clearly, and she devoured everything she could find on the subject of vampires, especially when Bram Stoker's seminal novel was published. Knowing what she was, she learned to blend in with society in order to find meals more easily.

Beryl traveled extensively after that, using money taken from her victims to buy clothing, makeup, and whatever else she required, including identities. She often went to war zones, enjoying the easy pickings. In 1922 she saw the silent film Nosferatu, and her fascination with books about vampires was replaced with a fascination for movies. All of them, although she misses the glamour and elegance of the older Hollywood stars.

She's come to Ellington because after so many years alone, she's feeling the need for the security of a clan, or at least friends. Well... associates that she promises not to kill.