Nyssa Damaskinos

Nyssa now represents her region’s vampires whenever visiting Inisfree.

 

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Table of Contents:

1. Spec’s
2. Life Summary
3. History
4. Powers and Abilities
5. Weaknesses
6. Nyssa & Auz
7. 2020 Update
8. 2022
9. Warrior-princess Days
10. Relaxing at Club Tutank and The Caligula Creamery
11. Alternate Looks

 

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Spec’s:

 

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Life Summary:

• Nyssa is born a vampire, and raised as a princess of her secret vampire kingdom in Europe.
• When she came of age, her extensive education and training began to include that of an assassin; she learned ninjutsu, swordsmanship, and the rest of the martial and shadow arts.
• The Reapers began to threaten her kingdom, as well as vampires of many other realms, and so the Bloodpack began to combat them, Nyssa eventually joining its ranks.
• Teaming up with the Daywalker, Blade, she and the Bloodpack stood a much better chance against the Reapers.
• Infected with the Reaper virus, she instead chose death, rather than succumb to its effects.
• Blade helped her with that request, the two only revealing their feelings for each other in her final moments.
• Once Blade had left, the Inisfreeans stepped in and worked their genius healing ‘magic’, evacuating Nyssa’s reforming remains to their hidden city, where she spent the next months stabilizing.
• Auz then made contact with Blade, and arranged for him to see the woman he thought he never would again.
• Nyssa was no longer an assassin; she divided her time between dates with Blade, and representing her people each time she returned to Inisfree.

 

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History

Nyssa was a pureblood vampire living in Prague in the early 21st century. She was the daughter of vampire overlord Eli Damaskinos and the sister of Jared Nomak. In 2002, Nyssa and her partner Asad enlisted the aid of their most feared enemy, the Daywalker, Blade, in order to stop an even more powerful threat – the Reapers. Nyssa worked alongside a team of highly trained vampire agents, the Bloodpack, and was present when the Bloodpack raided the House of Pain looking for reapers. After the mission, Nyssa discovered that the progenitor of the Reaper Strain was her own brother, Jared Nomak. Nomak bit Nyssa infecting her with the reaper virus. Before she could succumb to its effects, she asked Blade to take her to the roof of her father’s building so that she could see the sunrise. As the sun came up over the horizon, Nyssa turned to ash and died in Blade’s arms. It is shown that Nyssa had mutual feelings for Blade and Blade himself was visibly affected when she died.

 

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In rare cases, vampires are able to sexually reproduce with other Vampires, creating a pureborn (a.k.a ‘pureblood’) Vampire who inherits the sum of both their parents’ Vampire strains, presumably making them more powerful and respected than others of their species.  Purebloods (純血種, Junketsushu) are the highest rank among vampires classed as Level A (Aクラス, A Kurasu, lit. “A Class”). They are “pure” vampires without any human ancestry, and can trace their lineage back to the original vampire progenitors.  Most vampires have some human blood in them, but a Pureblood vampire does not.  Non-pureborn Vampires are former humans that survived being bitten by a Vampire, either by choice or by accident, as the transformative genetic material given by the bite can cause fatal infection or damage.

 

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Powers and Abilities

Powers

All vampires share common superhuman abilities regardless of whether they were born a vampire, or were once human and were subsequently turned into a vampire. The only exceptions are vampire offshoots such as half-vampires and those who are carriers of the Reaper Strain.

• Vampirism: Vampirism is the physiological act of becoming and/or turning another human being into a vampire. Despite its roots in European folklore, vampirism exists in nature, and there are many such creatures who are actually born as vampires. Pathologically, vampirism is likened to a virus, carried in the saliva of predators. The vampire enzyme is carried through a victim’s bloodstream and within seventy-two hours, mutates the subject’s physiology, creating new parasitic organs. It has been described as “cancer with a purpose”.

• Immortality: Vampires are immortal creatures whose bodies cease to physically age beyond a certain point. Pure blood vampires will age into adulthood, while turned vampires maintain the physical form they had when they were still human. Theoretically, a vampire can live forever providing that it is not destroyed.

• Protractile Fangs/Claws: Vampires possess adapted musculature around the canine teeth that can extend these to become fangs. Similarly, they can also extend their fingernails to claw-like proportions.

• Superhuman Strength: Most vampires possess superhuman physical strength anywhere from 10 to 20 times greater than they possessed in their mortal lives. The vast majority of known and recorded vampires are capable of lifting from 1,000 lbs. to 4,000 lbs. A vampire’s enhanced strength also enables them to perform other superhuman feats such as leaping great distances. Supplementing their strength, vampires are naturally heartier than normal humans and can withstand severe physical exertion with no ill effects. It is unknown if vampire strength levels differ between pure bloods and turned vampires.

• Superhuman Durability: With the exception of certain restrictions, vampires are essentially invulnerable to most forms of bodily harm, including the effects of disease, and the natural cellular mitosis that comes with aging. Vampires are not living creatures, and as such, they do not require oxygen to breathe. Vampires can exist without undue stress in oxygen free environments such as being submerged under water or buried beneath the earth. Excessive force will cause physical damage to a vampire, but their bodies will regenerate damaged tissue providing they can supplement themselves with regular supplies of blood.

• Superhuman Reflexes: A vampire’s reflexes, agility and reaction time are many times greater than a normal human being. At maximum optimal capacity, a vampire can move more quickly than the human eye can perceive.

Abilities

• Nyssa is highly proficient in martial arts and is capable of dual-wielding a pair of wakazashi swords.

Weaknesses

• Hematophagia: Vampires require the consumption of human blood for nourishment and to maintain their existence. The required dosage of blood per vampire depends upon their overall strength and vitality, though most vampires need to feed at least once per evening. Older, more powerful vampires will sometimes require more blood than lesser vampires in order to maintain their health. The most common form of extraction is by biting a human victim upon the neck, usually on the jugular vein where the blood is freshest. Some vampires keep supplies of stored blood at secret locations called “blood banks”. This practice is more common amongst turned vampires and rarely employed by natural vampires, who prefer to feed on live prey. Failure to consume human blood at regular intervals may produce a variety of effects. Vampires may suffer a loss of vitality and cohesion and they will find it more difficult to maintain a human mien. If enough time has passed without nourishment, a vampire may enter a “blood frenzy” wherein they will act on primal instinct and take what they need from the closest available source, regardless of the consequences.

• Ultraviolet Radiation: The vampire’s greatest enemy is the power of the sun. Minimal exposure is known to cause great discomfort, even pain, but direct exposure to ultraviolet radiation is instantly fatal. Vampires are at their most vulnerable during daylight hours, and must sequester themselves in environments completely cut off from all natural light sources. When exposed to direct UV radiation, a vampire’s body will blister, burn and disintegrate into ash within seconds. Some vampires, such as Deacon Frost, have been known to apply a special protective ointment to their skin, which will enable them to survive minimal exposure, but even this is hardly considered a reliable alternative and most vampires know better than to take any undue risks. Artificial UV radiation is just as deadly to a vampire as natural sunlight. The vampire hunter known as Blade has been known to employ various UV gadgets in his quest to destroy all vampires including, UV lamps, UV target scopes and UV flashbang grenades.

• Silver: Silver nitrate is extremely deadly to a vampire. Bladed weapons forged from silver are more likely to destroy a vampire than conventional ones. If ingested, a vampire’s body will convulse wildly and disintegrate within moments. Silver nitrate combined with garlic extract produces a sort of “vampire mace” that, when sprayed, will cause a vampire’s body to quickly corrode.

• Garlic: Though unconventional, garlic is a useful tool against a vampire. A vampire who is tricked into consuming garlic extract will suffer severe pain and will be forced to flee so that he or she may recover. Concentrated doses of garlic extract, mixed with silver nitrate yields a deadly corrosive that will destroy a vampire in seconds. This chemical compound can be weaponized and used in impact grenades or aerosols.

• EDTA: Short for ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, EDTA is an anti-coagulant that reacts explosively to vampire physiology. Like silver nitrate and garlic extract, EDTA can be weaponized and used as a reliable offensive measure against vampires.

 

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Nyssa & Auz:

The moment the Inisfreeans became aware that it was possible to both 1) restore Sun-disintegrated vampires, and 2) manipulate the time-stream in various ways, Nyssa was one of their very first emergency targets.  Traveling back to the moment Blade left her remains, they applied the newly-acquired secret resurrection technique, ready to make an additional time-jump if it didn’t work.  …It did.

Nyssa took a while to recover, of course; even for a powerful vampire and hardened assassin, turning to ash in the middle of the morning is one hell of a thing to bounce back from.  It took all the most ancient and talented specialists of Inisfree at this time to get her back to her old self, but, with the expert and devoted care she received when transported to the Holistic Hospital, the months-long operation was at last a success.

Thankfully, not all memories are stored in the body, and anything that is done can, somehow, be undone.  Other vampires have come back from their ‘2nd deaths’.  In other words, there are old precedents for this; there is a trail of evidence for proven methods to solve these otherwise catastrophic problems.  A prime non-vampire example, one should note, comes from Wonder Woman; a group of deities came together and reassembled her from shattered stone.

To show her very deep gratitude for the complicated, risky, and lengthy healing process we made sure she received, Nyssa gave the Inisfreeans a ton of detailed information about how the pureblood process works; how vampires can reproduce on their own.  She also introduced Auz to a good number of the vampire purebloods and other vampire elites she knows, though ever careful to keep his existence, as well as that of his people, a deepest secret –even from the majority of her own kingdom and kind.

She had fallen in love with Blade before dying, and so it was that Auz made sure to reunite the two of them when the time was right.  Naturally, Blade was suspicious of the ‘impossible’ claims of the man he had never heard of before, but when he heard Nyssa’s voice, and then saw her at the rendezvous site, everything worked out.  Nyssa has since started dating Blade, and their ongoing help for one another remains frequent, though she no longer functions as an assassin for her kingdom.

 

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2020 Update:

Years later, and that vampire couple decided not to try and have a child; Blade didn’t want to put another being through the hellish childhood or adulthood he’d had, and Nyssa was fine with that, fully understanding.  They were just happy to be together again, and that’s how it would stay.  Humanoids and beyond-human people are often like that.

Returning to Inisfree this year after quite awhile back outside it, she has started unwinding there and enjoying her favorites of its many night-clubs.  Her ninja moves have translated well to dance ones, and she is quite popular wherever she lets loose.  Auz himself has made time to go see her there.

She lives in one of the Balcony-bowls Apartment-complex suites, often spending the night with her new lovers, such as Oona Ravensword and Jupiter Jones.

 

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2022:

Having known and hung out with Auz for more than half a decade now, Nyssa happily accepted his offer for marriage.  They will be getting married in Inisfree this year.  Their honeymoon will be in her favorite secret place in the Outlands.

 

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Warrior-princess Days:

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Relaxing at Club Tutank and The Caligula Creamery:

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Alternate Looks:

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