Occupation: Up until she moved to Mysteria, she worked as the night auditor for a small chain hotel.
Appearance: The most notable characteristic of Natalie’s appearance is that she is very thin. Her health isn’t always tip-top because of the abuse that dream walking has on her body. She has long dark blond hair, which has got a bit of wave to it and has never dyed it. She doesn’t have any preference as to how she wears it, as long as it looks all right. She has intense dark brown eyes that tend to have a look of curiosity to them, like she wants to say something but never does. She’s Caucasian, both of her parents the same. When it comes to her height, she's about 5'7.
Any kind of make-up that she wears are all earthly, natural colors. Browns and reds are what she usually sticks to. She never wears any perfume nor uses any kind of shampoo or deodorant that’s sweet or flowery scented. Nothing that attracts bugs, especially mosquitoes.
She tends to dress a bit odd, her clothes light and airy. Her wardrobe consists of mainly long flowing skirts and tank-tops. She doesn’t wear jeans much, nor does she own many tee-shirts. She prefers to wear sandals over sneakers and always wears a black leather necklace adorned with a wooden circular pendent, a triquetra carved into it for protection. Last but not least, she always wears a blue fabric wristwatch. One of those watches that has a Velcro band and can be adjusted to pretty much any size. It’s pretty ragged since she’s had it since she was 12 years old.
Personality: Natalie is very introverted. She isn’t much for social interaction in her conscious state. When she does talk with others, she’s quiet and a little sarcastic. She’s very non-confrontational and when faced with a “fight or flight” situation, she flees. Easily bullied, she does have her own means of retaliation from a distance, which has to do with her ability. Talking on the phone isn’t something she likes to do, feeling that it’s impersonal and just a plain hassle, which is why she rarely answers her phone without screening calls first. A big night owl, one can usually catch her out late at night if she’s not at work. The only time she ventures out into public is when she needs to run some errands, like getting groceries or paying some bills, and it's usually very early in the morning when the majority of folks are still asleep or just getting up to start their day.
One exception to her shyness are the ghosts that appear to her. She’ll chat it up with one of them for hours, simply because it’s interesting to know dead people, to listen to stories from their lives and what it was like to cross over.
In the dream world, she’s quite merciful. If she knows of someone who has trouble sleeping or has bad dreams, she’ll ease that individual’s mind into a peaceful slumber. She’s also more inclined to speak to someone in their dreams as opposed to real life. For some unknown reason, even to her, it’s just easier to talk to people that way.
Special abilities/talents: She writes. A lot. Poetry is her specialty, and the stories that she writes are fantastical and full of the oddities of life in general. She hopes to someday get her writings published. She also used to speak French fluently, but hasn’t spoken it since her mother passed away.
Supernatural Affinity: Species/Group: Human/Dreamwalker Power(s): She possesses the ability to enter dreams of others. While she cannot what a person will do in their dreams, she can manipulate, or change a dream. She can ease someone into a happy, serene place or send them to their wildest nightmare. Eventually, like her mother and grandmother, her ability will develop and become strong enough to control sleeping people in a dream-like state, like a puppet, or even kill them. While dreamwalking, if she’s injured, she’s injured for real. And as a dreamwalker, she can also see and talk to ghosts. Note: I just summarized the Dreamwalker abilities. And added the part about injuries. If that’s not cool, I can take that part out and revise the rest of the application that deals with that aspect.
Level: If applicable. If your characters race had level information, what level does your character fall under. Affiliation/Rank:If applicable. Are they part of a faerie court? A pack? Part of a special group? Preferred Prey: If applicable. Does your character only eat or feed from a certain type of being or human?
History: Daniel Stone and Janna LaRue met in college back in the early 60s. It wasn’t long before the two were wed in front of God and their families on a large white trampoline in a friend’s backyard. They spent the next five years driving around in a beatnik Scooby van, traveling across North America with friends and free love. To sum it up, they were hippies.
Daniel and Janna had always wanted children. After those first five years of marriage, the two decided to settle down and start their family. They tried unsuccessfully for about a decade, having no luck whatsoever. After ten years of disappointments (and both being in their mid 30s by then), the couple gave up on their hopes of a family. As soon as they stopped trying though, the stork finally stopped at their door. They had their daughter, Natalie Ann, three days early on April 23rd, 1984.
Now, Janna was a dreamwalker. She had a feeling that her new little daughter would be as well, seeing that the oldest in her family, for as long as she could remember, had that ability. It was then that she decided to tell Daniel about it. At first, he thought the was crazy or suffering from some kind of post-partum depression. He insisted that she go and see a psychiatrist, worried that this insanity would rub off on their child if she continued to babble about being special. It wasn’t until Janna repeatedly recounted Daniel’s dreams down to the most insignificant details that he finally began to believe her.
It turns out that Janna had been correct; Natalie indeed inherited the dreamwalking ability. It began by the time she was 7 years old. Janna had lay down to sleep and suddenly found herself in a dream world she didn’t recognize. It took her awhile to realize that her daughter had pulled her into one of her dreams. The following day, Natalie described in detail the events of her dreams, nailing every part that Janna remembered. From then on, she pulled her daughter out of public school and began home schooling her. She didn’t want Natalie to continue being involved with so many other children since children tended to have horrific nightmares. She feared that her child would enter another child’s dream and not return.
Because of her mother’s sheltering, Natalie grew up with very little social interaction. She became shy and didn’t fare well with strangers or other children. She was often caught talking to thin air. That was what her father thought, though. Her mother knew better. Dreamwalkers were able to see ghosts, so she always knew when one was lingering around and that Natalie didn’t have some imaginary friend. There were never really any malevolent spirits who stopped by, so the family never had any trouble in that sense.
Janna spent years teaching Natalie how to control her ability as best as possible. She had the child do concentration exercises a few times a day to sharpen her mind. She never let her watch any media that was remotely on the horror side. She spent much of her time ensuring that no creatures or another dreamwalker tried to break into her daughter’s dreams and vice versa. On Natalie’s 12th birthday, Janna gave her this blue digital sports watch and told her to always wear it. Every night before she went to bed, Janna would set the timer for her daughter. The watch was always on Natalie, even in the dream world, so it served as a means of time concept in the dream world, which for dreamwalkers, dreams have no concept of time. Granted, the watch didn’t always have a time on it in the dreams, but that timer always went off on schedule. When the timer went off, she knew it was time to exit the dream (if she was dreamwalking) and wake up to start her day.
Janna often stepped into her daughter’s dreams to watch over her while she slept. As a result of her constant dreamwalking with Natalie, her health began to deteriorate. By the time Natalie had turned 13, Janna was so frail and weak that she was bedridden. Finally, she dropped into a comatose state. Almost immediately, Natalie leaped into her mother’s dream and they stayed together in a perpetual and endless dream world. Both were hospitalized, leaving Daniel alone and virtually powerless to help them. Natalie’s health began to go downhill as well while she refused to leave her mother alone and trapped in her coma. Things were beginning to look bleak for the two as the little one’s 14th birthday came and went.
Finally, Janna gave way to the lure of death, and Natalie came back from her own self-induced coma. It would be another 6 months until she was healthy enough to rejoin the normal world and do normal things, like run up a flight of stairs or eat more than a chicken nugget in one sitting. Her mother’s passing affected her greatly. She stopped speaking French since Janna had been the only other person she knew who also spoke it, not to mention it was their own mother-daughter kind of thing. In fact, she didn’t speak much at all after that.
Since she didn’t have her mother around anymore to home school her, Natalie began the 9th grade at the local high school. Because of her lack of social skills, she had virtually no friends for the first year. Whispers bounced about the hallways, people theorizing that she was mentally ill or stuck-up or just plain out odd. Of course, there were the other stories, the more unrealistic ones as well, stuff made up by teenagers with way overactive imaginations. This didn’t help matters, and she continued to keep to herself.
Natalie didn’t participate in any clubs or activities despite the urgings of her teachers. Except one though. She joined the school choir in 10th grade. That’s were she finally made a few friends. Although, she still didn’t speak much. She did more singing than talking.
That’s also about the same time she discovered that if she got hurt while dreamwalking, she got hurt for real. It all came about during a friend’s nightmare. She’d unknowingly been yanked into that friend’s unconsciousness because in her friend’s nightmare, she was already in it. As soon as she was pulled in and before she had a chance to realize it, her friend’s nightmare attacker lunged at her, slicing her right forearm with his butcher knife. Natalie managed to turn the nightmare into a dream, but once she’d awakened she was stunned to find her bed sheets and blankets soaked with the blood from a very real wound. Immediately, Daniel’s fears of losing his daughter as well became much more apparent. He forbade her from using her ability, but she continued to without his knowledge.
The secret she kept from her father ended up estranging them. Once she graduated from high school, she moved out right away and got a little apartment of her own. She got a job working as a night auditor for a small, local hotel. Her sleeping patterns changed, which actually worked to her advantage. Since she worked the midnight shift, she slept during the middle of the day which was when most people were awake as it was, so she didn’t do much dreamwalking at all for the next few years. She paid regular visits to her friends’ children though, easing their dreams and giving them peaceful slumbers.
In January of 2008, she decided that she wanted to find others like her. She began searching, eventually led to the supposed myth that is Mysteria. So in April of that same year, she picked up and relocated there, ignorant of the fact that it was a hell gate or faire portal. All she knew of it was that it was a strong supernatural hotspot. She is not aware that vampires really exist, nor does she have any idea that there truly are other non-human creatures that live in the real world. She is aware, though, that there are individuals in the world who have abilities such as telekinesis and precognition.
Flaws: 1 - She’s deathly allergic to spiders. Any kind. One bite and she’ll die. This was uncovered as a young child when she was bitten by a common household spider and became immediately ill. If it were not for her father’s quick thinking, she would have died. She’s also allergic to mosquitoes. The bites usually swell to about the size of a silver dollar. She always puts on a lot of pest repellent before leaving the house, so she usually smells a little bit like repellent. She wears a lot of perfume to try and cover that up.
2 - She has a lot of scars. Some are noticeable, some are not. Most of them were not obtained the normal way though. When she’s dreamwalking, if she gets hurt there, she’s hurt for real. The most prominent scar is on her right arm. It spans about six inches on the underside of her forearm. It came from the nightmare of a friend from childhood. She raised her arm to defend herself from an attacker in her friend’s nightmare, and he cut her. A lot of people, when they see the scar, assume that at some point Natalie tried to commit suicide. But that wasn’t the case by any means.
3 - She’s addicted to coffee. Even though she sleeps a lot, the sleep never really gives her much rest. She drinks from five to ten cups a day. Any kind is good, but she prefers anything French Vanilla flavored.
4 - She’s terrified of Freddy Krugar. Sure, he’s not real. But you’d be surprised how many people actually have nightmares about him. And he’s just as terrifying in a dream as he is in the movies. Well, the ones where he was actually scary. She will not watch any of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” films. Or “The Blob.”
5 - She’s very superstitious. You’ll never catch her walking under a ladder or breaking a mirror. It can be a bit of a hindrance for her, seeing that she’ll walk a mile just to avoid crossing the path of a black cat. It’s just something that rubbed off on her from her mother.
6 - Her teeth are not in tip top condition. Not so much her front teeth but her back ones. It’s not because she doesn’t take care of them, but because when she’s asleep, if she’s having a nightmare or in another person’s nightmare, she grinds her teeth like mad.
Merits: 1 - Concentration. She’s spent years working on it so she could get a better grip on her dreamwalking. It gives her much more control over how long she stays in another’s dream and helps her break into a strong-willed person’s dreams. So she’s not easily distracted.
2 - She’s smart. Really smart. Since she’s not very social and prefers to stay home over going to the bar, she spends a lot of time with her nose in books. She well versed in history and naturally excels in English and grammar.
3 - She sings well. Not pop stuff though. She’s got an operatic voice, and the only place she’s ever sang in public was with her high school choir. Karaoke is a definite NO. She does sing a lot in private though. The only time anyone hears her is if they’re listening through the walls. Or if a ghost is lingering nearby.