SHEPHERD, nell doe

[stark]

NELL DOE SHEPHERD !?
’so this is your maverick, this is vienna.'

FULL NAME Nell Doe Shepherd. She changed her last name to sever all ties with her family, and took it from her favorite food, shepherd’s pie.
NICKNAMES Nelly, Nells.
AGE 632-years-old, looks to be in her early twenties.
GENDER Female.
BIRTHDAY Nell has long since forgotten since she stopped celebrating after her sister died. If she wanted to celebrate, she’d celebrate in her favorite season of spring.
SPECIES Immortal.
ALLIANCE Light.
SEXUALITY Pansexual.

PLAY-BY Ellen Page.
EYES Large brown eyes, just like her mother’s.
HAIR She is a natural brunette, and her hair comes half-way down her back, though she keeps it pinned up more often than not. It varies between an unctrollable mane and perfectly straigt.
BODY TYPE She is petite, or rather ‘fun-sized’.
HEIGHT 5’ 2”.
WEIGHT 105 Ibs.
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES Nell looks like anyone else passing on the street, but on the back of her neck are the words ‘We Are Blessed.’ tattooed into her skin. They are the most poignant words ever spoken, in her opinion, coming from the mouth of her twin.
STYLE It changes constantly. She wears everything and anything. And she likes to try on different types of clothes all the time, going as far as to dress in costumes and period ensembles just for the experience. In her downtime, she’s usually dressed in jeans and sports jerseys or sweatshirts, like any normal person.

LIKES At least 10.

• people.
  
• outdoors.
  
• learning.
  
• food.
  
• traveling.
  
• making people happy.
  
• games.
  
• smiling—its her favorite.
  
• the world.
  
• music.
  
• children.
  

DISLIKES At least 10.

• violence.
  
• her family.
  
• weapons.
  
• being powerless.
  
• feeling trapped.
  
• sadness.
  
• staying still.
  
• intolerance.
  
• loneliness.
  
• hate.
  

STRENGTHS At least 4.

• clever. She is intelligent, and knows how to survive in the world.
  
• determined. She is undaunted, and will set out to do something until it is complete.
  
• multilingual. In accumulating knowledge over the years, she studied as many languages as she could so she could interact with everyone.
  
• kind. Nell is gentle-hearted, and genuine. She cares about the world more than she does herself.
  

WEAKNESSES At least 4.

• passive. Nell avoids all sorts of conflict, and she hates lifting a hand against anyone else.
  
• ignores herself. Whenever considering anything, she hardly takes herself into consideration. She had pretty low self-esteem.
  
• physically weak. Even if she wanted to defend herself, she couldn’t. All she is good for is running away. If she is trapped, she’s as good as dead.
  
• her past. It is a constant weight on her shoulders, a burden that she cannot unload.
  
• gullible. In her desire to please everyone, she can be taken advantage of easily.
  

HABITS At least 3.

• Threading flowers in her hair during the spring. Sometimes she doesn’t even realize she’s making a crown of daisies if she’s distracted enough.
  
• She has a bad habit of falling out of beds. She prefers to sleep outside, usually in trees because she enjoys heights.
  
• She tends to sing opera airs under her breath whenever she’s doing something.
  
• Tilts her head when curious or intrigued.
  

FEARS At least 3.

• Clautrophobia. Nell is not so good with small spaces. It has gotten better over time, but she still prefers the great outdoors and does not enjoy locked doors.
  
• Her mother. She is a constant shadow on the edge of Nell’s psyche.
  
• Losing her emotions. She loves the world and it frightens her to imagine the fact she may no longer feel that way. It almost makes immortality seem pointless to her.
  

DESIRES At least 1.

• Nell wants to help everyone she comes across in any way possible.
  
• To find someone to save her from loneliness.
  

SECRETS At least 1.

• Nell is still a virgin. She has never gotten close enough to anyone to become physically intimate with them.
  
• She never regrets selling her soul, because she has met so many wonderful people in her time.
  

OVERALL
Nell is almost always smiling, unless there is another expression of amusement or intrigue on her features. Her smile is one that when its aimed at you, you are the most special person in the world. She is best described as a happy person, pure and simple. Her happiness is not her own, but comes from the people she meets, those who she learns the stories of. She has deicated her everlasting life to ensuring the happiness of everyone in the world. It is the thing she lives for, because she knows it’s not something that will ever lose its appeal, its work that is never finished. She is very energetic, and must always been moving around, must always have something to do. Open spaces suit her best, so she can move around and feel free. These are the lasting affects of an early life spent in imprisonment.

Her life is also devoted to studying and learning, dedicating herself to the arts and sciences and music. She is a scholar of sorts, but does not speak of the things she knows or has experienced unless she deems it necessary. Nell is a very secretive person, because she feels that she is always on her guard. She has made many enemies in her lifetime, and so half the time she spends paranoid of her past catching up to her. She deflects these fears by travelling as much as possible. However, despite her passivity, she is confident and seems to fear nothing. She is always calm, even in times of great danger, and appears to be completely confident in herself. However, she spends lots of time ignoring who she is. Because she hates herself for mistakes she’s made in the past, her mother having a long-lasting affect on her. She believes she is worthless when she is alone.

Even though she has lived a long life and has seen many a thing, she maintains an image of ethereal purity. It’s true, she is a virgin, but she also has her innocent love of the world. She is like a child experiencing things for the first time, every time she wakes up in the morning and sees the sun. There is always much for her to see, and to learn, and people to meet. She thinks the world is glorious, and claims that is why she always has a smile on her face.

MOTHER Mia Ann Sinclair (immortal), unknown whereabouts.
FATHER León Trinidad Corteas Fuentes (immortal), scientist.
SIBLINGS Till Rae Sinclair Fuentes, deceased.
OTHER PERSONS OF IMPORTANCE Jane Sinclair (immortal), crime boss/musician
ETHNICITY Hispanic.
WEALTH STATUS Roots in aristocracy.
OVERALL
Nell grew up in the city of Barcelona, Spain when it was still under Roman control. Her early life was less than peaceful. Her mother was originally from the Roman Empire, but left after its decline in 476 AD. As an immortal, she had spent hundreds of years. She ended up living in Prussia until the uprisings caused her to find another home, and she decided on Spain. There, she met another immortal by the name of León. Together, they had two children, twin girls. Nell Doe was born first, and her father always told her it was a smile on her face. Till Rae had been the second to come, and she was born chronically ill, thanks to unequal placenta sharing. Nell had grown healthy in the womb while Tilly slowly died. Her mother, already unstable thanks to a history of mental illness in her family and years of loneliness, blamed Nell for this. Because of this blame, the woman paid more attention to Till than she ever did her other daughter, and not being ignorant to this, León devoted most of his attention to Nell.

However, there was something lacking in both the girls’ childhoods—they were not allowed to set foot outside. Mia kept all the doors of their cottage locked. “The world is a dangerous place,” she would tell her daughters. The woman had seen too much to ever trust the world again. León saw nothing wrong with this, but then again, he never really had a good family to base his own parenting skills off of. However, there was something obviously wrong in the way Mia treated her husband and Nell. She was threatening, violent, but she never touched her frailer daughter. Nell was terrified. And so she went to her father for help. However, he disappeared right after, leaving her with her dying twin and her mentally unstable and violent mother. The year after was spent wondering what the outside world was like, and wishing she could save her sister. But there was nothing she could do, as her identical twin died the year after. “We are blessed,” the girl had said during a conversation two weeks before, the last words she’d be able to speak before she grew to weak. Nell had no time to grieve, because that was when Mia’s threats turned to physical action, and years of torture ensued.

Nell was too afraid to escape. She had been taught that the world was a bad place, but could it be worse than her abusive mother, a woman who would burn her and call her by her sister’s name, still holding onto the daughter she loved the most? Once, in an effort to separate herself from her sister, Nell cut off her hair. Instead of a positive reaction, Mia used the knife to carve the word ‘whore’ into her stomach—but it was also the first time she was lucid enough to call her ‘Nell’. The mental deterioration became worse from there, as Mia seemed to hear things that weren’t there, would accuse Nell of doing things she couldn’t have even done. It continued for years, until Nell became numb, until it became a simple ritual of life. It wasn’t until Nell felt disease eating away at an untreated wound that she knew she needed to get out, get somewhere safe. She fled from the cottage after her mother fell asleep, and almost died. On the brink of death, however, she was offered an exchange. She chose to live forever. Her mother would find her missing in the morning, and come for her. Nell was only thirteen-years-old, but she decided to keep running. She didn’t know where she was going. But she knew how to survive. It was something she was good at, and so began her life as a nomad.

She stayed in Spain for a while, travelling as far away as possible. That is until the Spanish Inquisition came around. Nell couldn’t bear to watch the inquisition, and so made her best efforts to help as many Jews to Cuba as possible. She wouldn’t run when people needed her help. She was still young in terms of her immortality, but no one knew who she was. After the Spanish Inquisition ended, she travelled Europe, still a nomad. Her haunts were libraries and colleges. Even though it may have seemed an aimless life, along the way she performed acts of charity to those who she met. They may not have realized it was her who did it, but as long as she could help a struggling family, an injured soldier, anyone she could—she did. In the 16th century, she returned to Spain with great trepidition, always in fear of her mother. However, she wanted to voyage to the new worlds discovered, always having a taste for adventure. She returned to Europe in the 17th century for a short period of time, in time for the scientific revolution. It wasn’t until the 18th century that she headed to the colonies in America, fascinated by how they were developing. She flitted everywhere she could, making no connections, not settling down, simply moving around in order to help anyone she could. However, she was always in fear of her mother. She could only assume that she was still around.

In the 1930’s, after years of meeting as many people possible, she headed for Germany to help the Jews escape Nazi occupation, a terrifying experience of déjà vu for her. She did not expect to ever meet her father again, but it was just the right place at the wrong time. A restaurant in Munich. Her father, a man who never changed. Nell approached him, not knowing what to feel—until it came to her. She hated him. He was living under the name of Leon Adler, and working under the infamous Josef Mengele. He said his experimentation on twins was for the benefit of Nell and the daughter that had died—she knew he must have been purely evil. She didn’t know what to do from there, but she wanted to bring him down some way. But she was powerless. She couldn’t kill, hated the idea of violence. And so she sabotaged him through anonymous tips to say that ‘Leon Adler’ was a Russian mole, and was spreading Allied propaganda. Before anything could come to a head, her father fled from Germany, and she had made an enemy of another parent. But she was glad that she could have changed the course of history in that small way.

After the war, though she’d rather have returned to America, she stayed in the Soviet Union. She wondered where her father had gotten himself to, and still feared that her mother may be able to track her down, that invisible plague always behind her. Deciding that it was time to move on, she left and headed to New York, one of her favorite places in America. There, she met someone who she thought she’d never have to meet—her mother’s sister, Jane. After the Roman empire collapsed, the family had seperated and Jane sold her soul to try and find her sister again. She heads a major crime family that Nell became mixed up in when she became a protector of Jane’s daughter, Luce. Nell was never on her aunt’s good side, ever since she claimed that she had no idea where her mother was, and said that she had fallen off the deep end. Eventually, she had to escape and hide out from the woman after Nell tried to lead the DA to her in order to save Luce from a future of crime. Nell disliked Jane’s meglomaniac behavior, her desire to have humans fear the might of all supernatural creatures. After meeting this woman, Nell aligned herself with the light, determined to assist everyone and keep the peace.

NAME/ALIAS stark.
AGE seventeen.
TIME ZONE est.
HOW YOU FOUND US other than EVERYWHERE I GO BECAUSE I’VE BEEN LURKING LIKE A BOSS…caution.
OTHER CHARACTERS nupe.
RP SAMPLE

Nell had to say, she really liked her new apartment. It was certainly cleaner than her downtown place, all bright with the large windows she had in the kitchen that fell across the floor of her living room. It was wide open, too, unlike the studio apartment. There was so much room for activities, and she was sure that Pablo enjoyed it as well. The spotted kitty was curled up on top of the entertainment center, one of his favorite places to be, since he seemed to enjoy knocking her picture frames down. She sighed as she walked into the apartment, wine bag in one hand, keys and her messenger bag in the other. Nell scratched the cat before right the picture of she and her sister. She kind of regretted burning the ones she had of her father since he came back, but then she remembered that back then he shouldn’t have been immortalized. She didn’t feel so bad then. The other pictures on top of the entertainment center were of her and her friends, now, and at least they stood untouched by Pablo.

She stepped into the kitchen, dropping her keys and the bags onto her small wooden table. Dining room. Nell wondered where Josh was, but figured that since it was only afternoon he was probably out somewhere. Even engaged, they didn’t keep tabs on each other at all times. She liked that. She could still have her freedom, even when living with him. Speaking of the engagement, Nell had gone out to dinner with Stephanie Kustack, her co-worker, and the woman had given her a bottle of wine. From France. ”It’s wine, not like I’m giving you hard liquor,” the woman had said, waving her hand. She probably understood how it was in a lot of other cultures—wine with dinner. Nell had been drinking wine for a while, and she did prefer red, so she thanked Stephanie even though the woman had been encouraging underage drinking. That was the least of Nell’s crimes, however. She had bartended for a year, but it wasn’t like Stephanie knew that. It wouldn’t have looked good on a resume for a job at a daycare, especially since she’d been fired from her last one.

It took a bit of hunting to look for a bottle opener, and as she began to uncork it—the wine wasn’t too expensive, as a matter of fact it was a noveau—she thought about how she was actually alone. She didn’t like to drink alone. Well, unless it was beer, she’d drink that whenever, and that was usually a rarity. She was pretty straight-edge considering her past occupation, but that didn’t mean she abstained from alcohol. She decided to hell with it, and uncorked the bottle, finding a glass to pour it in. It wasn’t the best, but Nell liked it because it was a gift from a friend. She decided she might as well decompress from the day, and placed the glass on her coffee table. It made a soft clink noise that disturbed Pablo from his rest on top of the entertainment center, but she didn’t notice as she opened her laptop. She wasn’t good with technology, and it appeared to have a vendetta with her, but she could now navigate the laptop pretty well.

Not long after Nell became a bit bored, and the solution for that was always company. She took out her phone from her pocket and the first name she took notice of was Ethan, and that was because she hadn’t seen him since the engagement. She was quick to text him with a, ”You should drop by and celebrate the christening of my new apartment.” It wasn’t too new, but Nell gave him the directions and told him he could drop by anytime. The laptop still on her legs, she was searching something when she saw an advertisement for a dating site, and a mischevious glint appeared in her eyes. Ethan was single, wasn’t he? She wondered if he wanted a girlfriend or anything, and figured that after she informed him of the engagement, she’d focus on his love life.

[izzy]