Layla
Sobriquet: "That Freak" or "The Tranny".
Appearance: Layla stands about 1.75 meters tall (5ft-9inches) and probably weights about 77 kilos. In Bulgaria, she is what is referred to as a "big-girl" and she has a very full figure.
Were it a more enlightened age, she would be seen as a fully attractive woman. But while the rest of the Western World is becoming more accepting of the normality of feminine form, Eastern Europe is consumed by full-blown Barbie-ism.
Her eyes, hair color, skin tone, birthmarks and scars seem to vary from night to night. Though her general shape remains constant, as does her actual weight, everything else about her is in flux. She dresses fairly conservatively, in expensive business suits, elegant evening dresses and in private - sumptuous neglige.
Her jewelry is all expensive and new, purchased from the best artists in Sofia. She wears a variety of very expensive perfumes, special ordered and prepared just for her. She is especially fond of high-heeled shoes, specifically stiletto heels, the higher the better - as she can be seen prancing about in footwear that adds fifteen-plus centimeters to her height.
Background: Layla's life can be summed up in the adage that: "Bad beginnings, lead to bad ends." Layla is an alias for Dominion Mariel, which can in some lights be seen as an alias for the woman born as Marge Kahn. Marge was born into an upper class family in Chicago - Illinois, in the late nineteenth century of the United States.
Her birth was an embarrassment to her family as she was born out of wedlock to an underage girl. Her mother Helen Margaret Kahn was exiled to a private asylum for her nymphomania and thus disappear from polite society. Marge was raised by a spinster aunt in the country. Aunt Evaline was a strong protestant woman, who brought Marge up to believe in 'Original Sin', especially her own innate sinfulness as a child of fornication, born outside of marriage and to an obviously depraved girl just like Marge. She was taken to church often, beaten often and told to pray for forgiveness from god for her inherited evil.
Predictably, she learned to hate all of her aunt's values and knowing she was going to be punished anyway, became a little hellion. Early on she came to identify with the underdog and the antiheroes of Victorian society. Of course, being born at the tail end of the nineteenth century, she gravitated towards the occult and as a teen she explored each of the gateways that would according to her puritanical upbringing lead to hell: alcohol, marijuana, sex, witchcraft and animal sacrifice. Perhaps as a rebel, she took her rebellion too far or more likely she simply believed what she was taught as a child, that she was doomed to an afterlife of eternal punishment just for being born.
When she was fifteen, her aunt's house caught fire while she was at school and her aunt perished in the flames. She was never suspected of having started the fire to cover her aunt's murder the night before. Instead, she was returned to her mother's family in Chicago, who forced her into a convent to prevent her appearance in local society.
The convent did one thing for her, it introduced her to satanism in the person of an elderly nun who initiated Marge into true infernal-ism. Priskilla was more than just any nun however, she was the mother-superior of her convent; she worked hard to destroy the church from within by teaching her charges the true route to heaven, by breaching its gates under the command of the fallen angels.
Marge proved an apt pupil and quickly rose to become something of a celebrity among the satanists of Chicago. She did her duty as an alter-girl, managed to find unwanted babies for sacrifice, seduced the innocent to the cause of satanism, and learned to conduct the black mass when her mentor was too ill.
It was in this capacity as protege to the high-priestess that she came to meet Horace Turnbull - a Malkavian Antitribu and a secret member of Chicago's Sabbat cell. At the moment of their meeting, there was a spark of familiarity between the two, Marge saw a monster who could teach her what it meant to be truly evil and damned, while Horace found a lover who could accept him for what he really was and who would still truly love him.
Shortly after World War I, Horace brought Marge to a Chicago graveyard, drained her of blood, embraced her, knocked her unconscious with his sledge hammer and buried her in a coffin with a couple of her sisters from the coven. When she arose later that night with the blood of her sisters in her mouth, she was immortal and a fledgling member of the Sabbat. That night, she met the rest of his pack and began to learn what she would need to survive the centuries.
The Roaring Twenties were a fabulous time to be alive and an even better time to be undead. Marge and Horace fed to their content, killed as often as they liked and rubbed shoulders with mobsters and molls. One night in 1923, Horace introduced her to a young Italian man named 'Al Capone', who had come to Chicago from New York to run liquor and had recently taken over the town of Cicero just to the north of Chicago.
When she first arrived in the city, she claimed a dead sire of little repute and sought to make Sofia her new home. When asked about her city of origin, she simply said that she traveled a lot and history had made of her a nomad. Primogen Bohuslav (Anastas Grozdan) took responsibility for her and granted her the right to feed in his domain. Upon her arrival in Sofia she solicited in Elysium for someone to bankroll her ideal venue called ‘Club Montage’. A couple years after her arrival, a silent partner put up the necessary capital for her to finally open her club, which like so many others in Sofia seems to undergo constant evolution.
Despite the fact that Layla has made a more than passing attempt to fit into the night society of Sofia, she has for the most part failed. Bulgarian society is on the whole, a conservative one and its vampires are far more so than their counterparts in the so called "New World." While the Kindred of Sofia are slowly catching up to the twenty-first century, they aren't ready for Layla's sexual evolution. Of course, since she is one of the "Low Clans" these things are seen as perversions or perhaps more correctly as mental aberrations - she is a Malkavian after all. Like minded mortals have begun to use her club as a clandestine meeting place that provides the anonymity that equals safety in Eastern Europe.
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