Grace Dewitt
Grace DeWitt, a farm-girl turned adventurer and sailor, cook and substitute mother, and just all-in-all right-hand woman of Emma Valgard.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Once, Grace had a family, a farm and lived as a simple farmgirl on the Isle of Wight. But her family caught the Sweats in the late part of 1551 and only she recovered. The others died isolated in the sleeping room. The farm became a place of sorrow, only broken when she met Emma, who saved her on the road from brigands. They quickly developed a friendship. Grace accepted Emma, monstrous as that seems, because her family held a secret.
Grace's family had long been giving a sacrifice of blood to the creatures in the bog near their farm. The yellow-eyed beings who walked like men and fed on blood came at night just a few hours past dusk, and in return for the blood the family were left alone.
One night, while returning from selling her vegetables, Grace was waylaid by bandits. A woman swept out of the bog and to her rescue. She was ragged and stank but she was heroic. To show her gratitude Grace took the woman to her home, drew her a bath and gave the woman one of Grace's dead sisters' dresses. That was how Grace and Emma met.
The next night, Grace was waylaid again by the same men and this time with terrible intent. Emma once again ran in to save her, this time using her Vampiric abilities. On seeing Emma save her, for the second time in just a few nights, Grace witnessed the red eyes and knew her as something supernatural like things in the woods. She had tested the wardings against Vampires that her family taught her, garlic and the crucifix, and neither had had any effect. Emma had said she was Lutheran, which seemed odd given that this was England, and to belong to any but the Church of England was criminal heresy. Grace accepted Emma was something else, and figured, having already invited the woman-thing in, the damage was done. Grace longed for death in those early nights, but instead offered up a ladle of blood from her nightly sacrifice, which was not immediately drank. This Emma would become Grace's only friend through the next months, arguably the darkest of her life.
Towards the end of 1552, Emma began to prepare to leave. Grace prepared to go with her, afraid to be alone again. With the approval of Alethia, and then Omarosa, Grace left the farm with her new friend.
They traveled on the Bonne Ventura under Omarosa to Venice. Emma navigated, Grace cooked. They spent months in Venice, staying with a tailor who made them both such nice dresses and workclothes with pants! Their very first night there, Emma freed some slaves from the kitchen of an Inn that specialized in housing traveling Vampires, and those girls joined Grace as part of Emma's entourage. In March, they left Venice, arriving in France in late April.
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