Nicholas Vick
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Sobriquet: Nicky the Chop
Appearance: In her female persona, Diana is an unassuming woman of middling years with a demeanor not unlike a doting mother's. She smiles curiously frequently for one of the undead, though her eyes are tired and droop a bit. When she adopts Nicky the Chop's personality, however, she becomes gruff and coarse, cursing with the best of them. Here, her slightly heavy body becomes warehouse bulk. She wears heavy pants and blue-collar work shirts with the name Nick" embroidered on them. In this guise, she also brushes ash on her face, giving the illusion of a troublesome beard just growing in at the end of the day. She affects the squint of a barroom smoker rather than the look of an exhausted woman.
Behavior: What began as a lark is becoming your dominant personality. In fact, some nights go by in which the only time you spend as Diana is the time preparing to be Nicky. In protecting your secret, you've become more than a little nervous, but you're not exactly sure why. After all, the worst that could happen if you're found out is embarrassment. Then again, with some of the talk you've heard over poker games, you're kidding your self if you think it's all an innocent ruse. It's surprising: The longer this goes on, the higher the stakes have become. That philosophy has colored your outlook in other Kindred matters as well, and you rarely remain part of any one venture for too long, at risk of blowing your cover or being dragged into something that's more involved than you want to be.
History: What would cause a widowed outer borough housekeeper surreptitiously turned into a Kindred to abandon the comforts of her previous lifestyle and adopt the smoking, cursing, poker-playing habits of a backroom cardsharp? In a word, thrill.
Diana Vick should never have become a Kindred, but a less-than-stable sire Embraced her after breaking into her Queens home and killing her husband while feeding on him. To Diana Vick, it was a blessing in disguise. Sure, she would rather Pete not have had to be killed, but it was a loveless marriage anyway, and she really had little sense of herself. After the Embrace, she confided in her brother what she had become, and the two decided to use Diana's new found powers to their best advantage. Jimmy, her brother, knew a few of the local small-time gangsters in his Brooklyn neighborhood were into poker, but the police had just shut down the game they had been playing. With their contacts and Diana's new prowess, they opened a new game. The only problem was with the hostess: No body wanted to play cards in the living room of a widowed Queens woman.
To that end, Diana invented a blue-collar persona, Nicky the Chop," and rented a Brooklyn auto shop at which to hold card games on Friday and Saturday nights. Nicky," as the house, earns "his" chop from every game that takes place under his roof, and can take home as much as $2,000 in a single night. Nicky's also not above using a Discipline discreetly here and there to supplement those winnings. Sure, Jimmy gets his share, but he's really only in it for whiskey and cigarettes.
A few Kindred know about Nicky's game, but not about the person behind it. In fact, those Kindred who come to play cards consider Nicky's a sort of Elysium, where Licks can just come to play cards and leave politics at the door. The reality of the situation is a bit more complicated, as a disproportionate number of anarchs have begun playing on Friday nights, and Nicky's a little worried that he might be seen as an anarch sympathizer. Still, no one's mentioned anything yet, and it's still a good cover for grins and profits.
Diana has appeared both as herself and as Nicky the Chop before the Kindred of New York, though one never mentions the other and why would they? To date, no one suspects anything. Things could change soon, how ever, as the card-house Elysium is a meeting place for Kindred, and invariably "shop talk" makes its way from table to table. Nicky also expects to come to the attention of local organized crime soon, who may want a chop of their own. What that means for the game, for Nicky and for the Kindred who play remains to be seen.
Recent Events:
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