Mary Wyncott
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Sobriquet: Doctor Wyncott (formal) - Mary (informal) - Christine (intimate)
Appearance: Christine appears to be an attractive woman in her early thirties. She has long silky dirty blond hair that hangs to her hips, pale and flawless skin with only a few freckles that she shows off to good effect and jade green eyes which can take on other hues depending on her mood. She is only a few inches short of six feet and full figured; she combines her natural beauty with a stunning wardrobe and tasteful jewelry for a more powerful effect, though she disdains the use of cosmetics on all but formal occasions.
Behavior: She is an early twentieth century American beauty trapped in amber. Christine has a cultured way of speaking and consummate social skills combined with a nearly iron will to create respect in almost all those with whom she interacts. She always maintains eye contact, never raises her voice and absolutely never uses profanity, though her body language can be absolutely pornographic when she is feeling naughty.
History: Born into a prominent New England family who arrived in America as puritans, Christine grew up the child of privalige to a strict, but loving father and a devout mother. By the standards of her day, Christine's youth was rewarding, but not easy, for she was required to learn all the graces of a young lady of society and was expected to enter into a prearranged marriage to a man of her station, becoming a mother and a wife.
Secretly she yearned for something more and her only confidant was her younger brother, Joseph. Often they would lie awake at night and wisper to each other of their dreams: he wanted to be soldier and to see the world, she wanted to be like her father, a doctor; but women were not allowed to be doctors, at least not young ladies of station such as herself and his hopes seemed as unlikely, for his father wanted him to be a physician and his mother would never approve of his entering the military.
All that began to change shortly after Christine's sixteenth birthday, when her mother, a devout protestant and a woman of often poor health, died. Though she had many aunts who often tried to take her mothers' place and who regularly tried to arrange suitors for her, she began to run a little wild, which mostly consisted of spending time with her father, where ever he went, often helping with his practice. For that matter, her aunts were quite scandalized by both children's behavior for Joseph would often slip away after his father went to bed and go listen to the sailors and soldiers talk of the strange places they had been and all the wonderous things they had seen.
The physician was a man of principles and simple faith bound by the strictures of his day; the lose of his wife deeply wounded him and Christine and Joseph were all of her that was left to him, so perhaps he was a little lax with them. In the end this is what he would blame himself for, but by then it would be too late.
In the summer of 1914, war had broken out in Europe and many young men were running off to fight the good fight. Joseph was no different and so one night as his father slept he left with just a few belongings and a goodby to his beloved sister Christine. Few people at that time in America knew the harsh realities of war, Christine was no different, so when Joseph told her he was leaving, she celebrated with him and was glad, for it seemed that both of them were finally living their dreams.
Christine's father wasn't pleased when he discovered Joseph's deception, but like her he would read Joseph's letters over and over again as the months passed. For the better part of a year, all seemed well for Joseph sent letters regularly and she worked with her father every day, caring for the sick and injured of Boston. Then young men began to arrive at the hospitals of Boston, young men come back from fighting in Europe, often missing limbs, horribly scarred or with terrible wounds of the mind. Then Christine was scared for Joseph and her father began to write letters to important men in government, hoping to arrange Josephs return from Europe, but to no avail.
The next year wasn't so easy, because Joseph's letters stopped coming and her father even with his influence couldn't find out why, no one seemed to know anything about it. As the guilt and fear for his son began to eat at him, Christine's father began to rely on the medicines at his disposal to help him continue working. A year passed and there was no news of Joseph and the physician had become a shadow of his former self, often not eating and using cocaine to stay alert or laudanum to help him sleep. Two and a half years after Joseph's enlistment, the physician died and left Christine a young woman of wealth without a suitor. Her aunts tried to meddle and marry her off, but Christine had been running her father's life for the past year and couldn't easily be forced into anything. Her aunts despaired, fearing she would be a spinster and an embarrassment, but that wasn't to be the case.
A week after her father's death, she set sail on the first ship bound for Europe, the last letter from Joseph had come from Paris, a good place to start looking for him she believed. Upon arrival, she discovered the reality of war was chaos; no one knew what had happened to Joseph or where he might be. His last letter had been dated a couple of days before his last assignment or so his commanding officer said. Though there was no body, the army believed him dead, for he had been missing so long and he wasn't on any of the prisoner of war lists either. The commander was a nice man that tried to comfort her, but also told her to accept the truth, that Joseph was in all probability dead. Christine was torn between disbelief and the grief. In tears she left his office, but she would return many times over the next two years, for the commander would become her first friend and lover.
She sat in a small flat on the northern shore and grieved, but the isolation drove her to the outside world and so she returned to what she knew best, being the physician's daughter; she did charity work in the Red Cross and within a few months, she became a nurse at one of the hospitals for war wounded soldiers. It was months before she realized why she had chosen that hospital, because they had told her that all allied soldiers passed through it for triage; she was still looking for her brother. For the better part of a year she refused to accept that he was dead, she looked for him everywhere, but near the end of the war, it became apparent that she would never see him again, it was a terrible moment of realization.
Her relationship to the Commander ended with the war, as such affairs often do, but she would never forget him. Though the war had cost her a family, it had also made her independently wealthy, for her father's investments had paid off far greater than he would ever have imagined. The money meant nothing to her, so she continued to work in the charity hospitals of the city, often spending her own money to pay for the care of those less fortunate.
It was amid the charity wards of Paris's less affluent hospitals that Christine was to meet Renault; he was a physician like her father, but his skill and compassion far exceeded that of any healer she had ever met and his eyes told a story of infinite understanding, and of understanding her. From that moment, Christine would take every opportunity to work with the mysterious doctor, who only worked at night; she assumed like everyone else that he was private physician to the elite during the day and came to heal the poor at night, perhaps in his spare time. Their working together was erratic at first, and then more and more often he came to the wards where she worked and asked for her as his assistant. She was ecstatic, for she began to learn wondrous techniques for healing the wounded and curing the sick and Renault would often allow her to watch as he performed miracles.
Blissfully, a year passed while she worked as Renault’s pupil and she learned more of medicine in that year than all the years she had spent at her father's side in Boston. It was a happy time, the happiest since her mother's death, marred only by the mystery of Renault’s miracles of healing, the techniques that he said he could not teach her. Over the next few years she mastered the medicine of the time and became skilled in the ancient techniques that Renault used for his more mundane healings, by that time the twenties were ending and something else was happening, she was growing older.
As often happens when people are happy they pay little attention to the passage of time and Christine was happy, very happy and in love with life, suddenly, early in 1929 Christine became ill and the illness didn't go away, even when Renault treated her; only his miracles could drive away the constant pain. After a month, he told her the truth, she was dying of a rare cancer and all his skill couldn't heal it, only slow its progress. Even though he couldn't heal it, Renault said there was a way for her to survive the cancer that was slowly eating her body; it was then that he told her the truth of what he was and how he had survived the centuries. For he had been a physician in the court of the Sun King when he was mortal and another physician had offered to save him from a disease that couldn't be cured at that time; Christine listened in wonder and then horror, for what Renault told her finally revealed the source of his miraculous healings. She spent the long hours of the next day considering all that he had told her, but with his offer had come the admission that if she was like him, he could teach her how to work the healing miracles that he called Obeah.
To say that it was an easy decision, would be a lie, but no one wants to die and Christine loved life and was being offered the chance to heal lifetime after lifetime. That night when he returned to check on her condition, she accepted his offer and that night he made her immortal.
Together they worked tirelessly to aid the sick, insane and poor throughout Paris, the Thirties and the world wide Depression. They no longer paid attention to time, it no longer mattered and now she learned to heal wounds in one night that would have taken weeks or months to heal normally. They opened soup kitchens, charity clinics and shelters for those less fortunate; they met with the most learned minds, not only in medicine but in a myriad of other disciplines including art and philosophy. It wasn't until 1939 that she realized that she not only loved Renault but was in love with him and that he shared her feelings. Their romance was short but potent and then the winds of war swept their happiness away like it had never been.
It was the invasion of Paris and they did what they could for the wounded and dying, but there were far too many in need, for them to aid. Men in dark clothes with guns came and with them came others who were not men and who brought fire and death for Renault, who was good and kind and who had been healing the sick of Paris for 400 years. His last words, spoken into her mind, had been to flee and continue their work; because he asked it of her, she fled. The escape from France wasn't easy, but Renault had thought of this and provided for her escape to England and eventually to America.
The country she returned to had changed in some unimaginable way, for no one cared what was happening in Europe, they just wanted to look the other way. But, the war in Europe spread like a cancer to the rest of the world and could no longer be ignored. Christine returned to the ashes of Europe with the American military forces sent to end the war; she reprised her position as a Red Cross volunteer and searched for Renault in the devastation that was Paris in 1944. But, like her brother Joseph, he had been devoured whole by the very same monster, war. From that time on, she would follow the beast to the far corners of the globe aiding the victims of war.
It was in Bosnia, 2004 that she would again encounter the very same vampires that had killed Renault, she fled, but they chased her for the next two years, until she came to Sofia and asked the protection of that city's Prince, Emil. Sanctuary was granted and the Tremere sent away angry and empty handed. The end of that year, the Sabbat attacked and she continued Renault’s work, healing those in need. War and love seemed to go hand in hand for her, for it was during the siege that she was to meet Jamie and fall in love again after so many years.
Though, the Tremere still hunt her and she still heals those in need, she now has another reason to live and a new place to live, Sofia. The twenty-first century looks like its going to be interesting for Christine and she is still in love with life.
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