PC Flaubert
EXPERIENCE POINTS: 5
SUMMARY
Player: Eileen
Name: Justine Flaubert
Epitaph: n/a
Clan: Toreador
Sire: Dr. Paul Foster Case
Embraced: March 2, 1954
Apparent Age: 32
Nationality: French
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Hair: Lavender
Eyes: Hazel
Height: 6'
Weight: 170 lbs
Gender: Woman, femme-presenting
Ambition: Regain Humanity
Convictions:
- Fantasy comes before reality.
- A favor must be repaid in kind.
- Do not kill the innocent.
Touchstones:
- 1922 bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tache Grand Cru Monopole
- Damaris Neil
- Jacques & Didier
Humanity: 7
Generation: 13th
Blood Potency: 1
Attributes: Strength 1, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Charisma 2, Manipulation 2, Composure 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 4, Resolve 2
Secondary Attributes: Health 5, Willpower 5
Skills: Etiquette 4, Insight 3, Performance 1 (Burlesque), Persuasion 2, Academics 3 (Secret societies), Awareness 4, Finance 1, Investigation 2, Occult 2 (Tarot), Politics 3
Disciplines: Auspex 2, Celerity 0, Presence 1, Dominate 1
DESCRIPTION
Justine Flaubert is a tall Caucasian woman of average build and striking features accentuated with makeup. She has a tendency to dress in high Goth or vintage-inspired fashion and has a fondness for costume jewelry.
LANGUAGES
Spoken: English, French
Read: English, French
HAVEN
Club Medea
In 1979, Justine befriended Damaris Neil, the young owner of Club Medea, a burlesque and BDSM club she frequented in Manhattan’s West Village. Justine decided to break the Masquerade and reveal to Damaris that she was a vampire looking for a new haven. In exchange for staying at Medea, she would offer protection from Kindred and Kine alike. Damaris accepted and gave her the small flat above the club, as well as a regular Friday night spot to headline the burlesque show at the club. Since then, Damaris and Justine have become bosom friends and trusted confidantes.
Jacques and Didier
Few remember when the two mysterious regulars first started coming around Club Medea. Some claim that they were friends, others claim they were brothers. No one remembers their real names. What people do remember is how they always seem to appear in the shadows only just within view when Justine enters the room. Always dressed in full body black latex suits with gas masks obscuring their faces, they never speak—only obey. There are rumors among those who know of Justine that they are her ghouls, or that she inflicted Tabula Rasa upon them to permanently erase their pasts and keep them under her control. Those closest to Justine know that neither is true: They just can’t help but simp for Mommy. And Mommy is strict, but Mommy is kind.
BACKGROUND
Early Life
Justine is the great great niece of famed author Gustave Flaubert. Born to moderately wealthy parents in the medical field in Upper Normandy, she enjoyed picnics and sunlit bicycle rides along the Seine in her halcyon youth. As a young girl, she had a penchant for the architecture of nearby Flamboyant Gothic cathedrals such as Saint-Maclou, Saint-Ouen, and Notre-Dame. Justine idolized her uncle and other contemporary poets and authors such as Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo for their ability to shape popular discourse through their writing. In particular, she was fascinated by her uncle’s seminal work Madame Bovary for its view of human emotion as nuanced and contradictory. She identified with the title character’s desire to transcend her ordinary life, believing that she was meant for something greater.
Along with an interest in writing and rhetoric was a developing obsession for secret places and hidden meaning. She was delighted by Francis Burnett’s The Secret Garden, which sparked in her a lifelong quest for a haven, whether physical or mental, that would provide escape from the mundane.
After the Nazi occupation of France in May of 1940, political unrest grew rapidly in France. At 18, despite the battles happening virtually next door, Justine enrolled at the University of Normandy at Caen to study law at the behest of her parents. Being a woman, her goal at the time was not to complete a degree and become a solicitor but rather to improve her prospects for marriage. There, she also learned English. During a routine visit to the 19th century literature section at the University Library, she stumbled upon the work of French occultist Eliphas Lévi and of Theosophist Helena Blavatsky. That discovery would irrevocably change the course of her life.
Journey Westward
Without telling her family, Justine acquired a small reserve of funds and left for England in hopes of joining the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Though seen as precocious, the Isis-Urania Temple did not take her seriously and she was turned away outright. Realizing that there was a difference between the mainstream and unorthodox even in occult traditions, she sought out Aleister Crowley in London hoping that he would understand her as a fellow contrarian. By then an old man, Crowley suffered from chronic asthma which he medicated with heroin. He was working on the final plates for the Thoth tarot deck along with Lady Frieda Harris. Despite finding him to be a pompous windbag, Justine visited often just to listen to stories of his life’s work and watch Frieda work on the images. On March 21st, 1944, a limited edition printing of the Book of Thoth accompanied the completed Thoth Tarot Deck.
Not a month later, just before the Battle of Normandy, half of Rouen was destroyed by an Allied bomb attack, killing 1,200. Justine’s parents and some extended family died in the attack. Crowley gave the Book of Thoth to Justine and told her to walk Path 27, Peh, westward to find the House of God.
Justine could no longer bear to stay in Europe. Putting the past behind her, she journeyed by sea to the United States, and then to the West Coast by train to seek her true mentor. After arriving in Los Angeles and inquiring about the occult leaders there, she met Edward Fallinger, one of the founder of Builders of the Adytum's inner circle, in 1948.
In Dr. Fallinger, Justine saw a teacher who believed that access to occult knowledge should not be strictly esoteric, but openly available to those that sought it. He taught her about the Hermetic and Qabalistic correspondences of the Tarot and how it could be used as a means to self-discovery. She found the mysteries refreshingly easy to understand compared to the Golden Dawn who kept their secrets under lock and key, and Crowley who was largely inscrutable. He also told her about the political connections between various organizations such as Alpha et Omega, for whom he taught, B.O.T.A., for whom he wrote, and the Rosicrucian Order. In 1951, having proven herself to be a capable adept, she asked to be his protégé and he accepted.
Beneath the public façade of Fallinger as humanitarian and pedagogue was Fallinger the Toreador vampire. Fallinger had already chosen Justine for the embrace, but he was a consensualist. Just like his sire, Dr. Case had done before him, Fallinger offered Justine a choice: She could either remain mortal and have only a superficial understanding of the mysteries, or she could dip below the tip of the iceberg and glimpse the depth of the dark ocean below. He revealed to her that there was a deep Kindred influence in many occult organizations; for example that the Rosicrucian Order was run by the Camarilla Toreador. Life as a vampire would not be easy, but Case believed that it was a vehicle to access greater knowledge of the divine. Secretly, Justine’s ambition was to obtain greater material pleasure. She chose to “drink the poison” and joined the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC).
Early Unlife
Soon after the embrace, Justine moved to San Jose and rose in the minor ranks at the AMORC English Grand Lodge for the Americas at Rosicrucian Park. She maintained a connection with her sire through letters of correspondence. It was an education in Kindred unlife and Camarilla politics. She remained there for 20 years, but found that the momentum she had enjoyed in life had all but stopped. She was stuck in place.
Out of frustration and in a dangerous political gambit, Justine attempted to usurp the Grand Master of the lodge Isadora Grandiflora at an Elysium Court held at Rosicrucian Park. The incident was a humiliating failure that earned her a lasting reputation among West Coast Kindred circles as vain, pretentious, and self-centered, but also established her in the eyes of some as a serious contender within the organization. Nevertheless, Justine earned the disdain of her clan and the disapproval of her sire, with whom she would continue to correspond until she decided to leave California in 1976.
Recent Years
For Justine, the writing was on the wall. The AMORC influence within the Camarilla was dwindling and the New Age movement of the 70s was diluting the mysteries with popular Neo-Pagan pablum. Additionally, she began to wonder if the price she had paid for power and immortality was worth it. The only remaining possession of her mortal life, a 1922 bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tache Grand Cru Monopole that she stole from her parents’ wine cellar, became the linchpin of her new greatest ambition, to regain her humanity. She promised herself that she wouldn’t open it until becoming human again.
Justine to moved to New York City in 1976 to find a new center of art and culture. Disenchanted with Camarilla politics from her last, failed vie for power, she decided to keep a relatively low profile for the time being. At first repulsed by the gritty nightlife and concrete jungle to which she was unaccustomed, she came to appreciate and even revel in the thriving hedonism and camp glamor of '80s counterculture. She was also disgusted by the reactionary White evangelical Moral Majority which threatened its values and aesthetic, and determined that it was something worth protecting. She had a particular disdain for those that would conflate cult activity with Occult activity. “Having followers,” she likes to say, “is not the same thing as having good taste.”
Things were beginning to look up for Justine as she took up residence in Club Medea, a burlesque and BDSM club in the West Village of Manhattan. However, she just got word that Isadora Grandiflora also recently moved to New York to accept a position as Board Chair of the Guggenheim Museum. Maybe it was time for another foray into Camarilla politics…