Ilsa Cotovsky
Overview
Given the difficulty of travel and the ban on Embracing, it's rare to see a new face in Kindred circles. The newest face to grace Elysium (and one of the most beautiful) is that of Ilsa Cotovsky, a Gangrel nomad barely beyond her first decade in the Requiem.
While Cotovsky belongs to no covenant, she has steadfastly refused to fall in with the rabble that makes up Chicago's unbound Kindred. On the contrary, she comports herself in a very civilized fashion, more so in fact than some members of the covenants. By looking at her and making a guess by the way she interacts with other Kindred in Elysium, one might mistake her for an Invictus operator or a Carthian diplomat. Not only does she make an appearance at every Elysium, she talks and flirts and makes deals and often impresses those attending with tales of her travels, something Chicago's Kindred, bound as they are to the city, seem to appreciate.
Cotovsky knows how to captivate, and the covenants all want her to join them. She is the kind of respectable Kindred whose membership grants prestige to a covenant. Representatives from all five of Chicago's covenants have tried to recruit her since she arrived in the city, but to no avail. She thanks them and reiterates that she prefers to avoid subscribing to other's ideologies as much as possible. Beyond a few minor social rejections, Cotovsky's unbound status thus far seems not to cause her the least bit of discomfort - and therein lies the problem. Being unbound is supposed to have drawbacks, supposed to be limited; the unbound existence is supposed to be synonymous with "brutish" and "outcast." If it is not, young Kindred may be less willing to suffer the burdens placed on them by the Kindred organizations they serve. Individual Kindred appreciate Ilsa and her civility, but the covenants resent her as a flouter of tradition.
A political storm is brewing around Cotovsky at this point. As she establishes herself as a successful and well-liked Kindred even while refusing to join a covenant, certain young member of other covenants are finding her to be a role model for freedom, an exemplar of what an unbound could be if they all didn't seem to sink to the lowest possible level. Cotovsky sidesteps the responsibility and obligations of belonging to a covenant, and yet she appears to pay no price for her stubborn independence. Furthermore, a couple of the unbound have cleaned up their acts and are now doing what they can (with varying degrees of success) to emulate her and her success among the Kindred of Chicago. Some members of the Invictus fear she could unify the unbound and make them dangerous (although Maxwell is sufficiently taken with her than he will use his standing to protect her from such accusations). Some younger members of the Carthian Movement think they might make their collective point better by siding with her than with the vaguely disreputable ancillae of their own covenant. The more fervent supporters of the Lancea Sanctum despise Cotovsky and want her banished from Chicago permanently (although if she showed any interest in joining them, they would change their tune instantly).
There are now plots afoot to smear Cotovsky's reputation or frame her for some loathsome crime that will effectively defame and disarm her. Obviously, if she can be shown to be just one more untrustworthy unbound wretch, the hold she had on the city's neonates will be broken. Still, if the ancillae are right, and if the city's independent Kindred do rally around Cotovsky, she and the unbound might have a much larger part to play in the landscape of Chicago's Kindred politics.
Wildland Sunset
Cotovsky grew up in the Fernando Valley outside of Los Angeles and studied biology at UCLA. She was a bright, inquisitive young woman, and she and her parents alike assumed she'd be something eventually. As fate had it, she did become something, just not what anyone expected. Shortly after finishing up a master's degree in phytobiology, Cotovsky was an intern working for the national forests. She was walking back to her cabin one night when she met a grubby but somewhat attractive guy whom she thought would make an interesting summer fling. They talked late into the evening, and then he gave Cotovsky the Embrace.
She hated the Requiem at first. Several nights in a row her sire, Derek, had to talk her out of watching the sun rise. Each night he showed her a different aspect of her Kindred nature, and by the end of the summer, she'd grown to accept her death, but she hated her sire. She didn't want the same kind of isolated, lonely existence that he'd told her about. She'd been extremely social all her life, and she wasn't interested in giving that up just because he'd made that decision for himself.
She left him and undertook a nigh-suicidal campaign to educate herself about the nature and limits of the Requiem. As a scientist, she was interested in how far she could push the Vitae. In her trek away from her sire, she pushed the power of her blood about as far as it could go, having several violent run-ins with criminals, wild animals and, on a couple of occasions, the sun.
Cotovsky survived all of these, and not long after she left Derek in the California forests, she showed up in San Francisco, where she made a splash in Elysium, both with her good looks and her accounts of the dangers that lurk between cities. When the Prince tried to get her to be a pawn in one of his schemes, she decided to go back out to accumulate some more tales. After San Francisco, it was Portland, then Seattle, then Boulder, and now Cotovsky is in Chicago, and she's tempted to stay. She's amused by the way the covenants are all trying to recruit her; it's like the way boys are in high school when they'll say or do anything to get you back to their rooms.
Cotovsky has no interest in the vampire covenants at all, and she will not join one, but she likes Chicago, both for the ways it reminds her of LA and the ways it doesn't. If she's going to settle down in a city, she wants to be sure that she likes it, because she's seen how sessile vampires can become once they've settled in a place and established themselves.
For her part, Cotovsky hopes that the covenants will get over their political feeding frenzy and just let her function in Elysium as a free agent; otherwise she may need to move on.
Cotovsky is a very attractive young woman with curly dark hair and brown eyes. She favors clothes that are practical and sturdy, and on most nights she exhibits what might be called a tomboy's taste in clothing. On nights when she ventures into Elysium, however, she tends to dress to impress, and often wears a flattering black blouse with an expensive string of pearls.
Stats
Clan: Gangrel
Covenant: Unbound
Embrace: 1994
Apparent Age: 25
Mental Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 3, Resolve 4
Physical Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3
Social Attributes: Presence 4, Manipulation 3, Composure 5
Mental Skills: Academics 3, Computer 2, Politics 2
Physical Skills: Athletics 2, Drive 1, Stealth 1, Survival 3
Social Skills: Animal Ken 1, Empathy 1, Expression 1, Persuasion 3, Socialize 3, Streetwise 1, Subterfuge 1
Merits: Allies 2, Contacts 1, Danger Sense, Direction Sense, Haven 1
Willpower: 9
Humanity: 7
Virtue: Hope
Vice: Pride
Health: 8
Initiative: 8
Defense: 3
Speed: 10
Blood Potency: 1 (Vitae/turn: 10/1)
Disciplines: Majesty 1, Protean 3, Resilience 2
References
- VTR/WTF/MTAw/CofD: World of Darkness: Chicago, p. 142-144