Ezmerelda d'Avenir

Player Character

MandyMod

Ezmerelda d'Avenir, a Vistana, is the protege of Rudolph van Richten-despite the fact that her first encounter with the vampire hunter was anything but pleasant.

Witness to Tragedy.

When Ezmerelda was a little girl, her family kidnapped van Richten's teenage son, Erasmus, and delivered him into the clutches of a vampire. Even today, years later, she can still hear Erasmus's pleas for mercy. That event haunted her childhood.
Van Richten tracked down Ezmerelda's family soon after the kidnapping, but not before the Vistani had sold the boy. Though van Richten could have done them harm, he instead interrogated Ezmerelda's mother on the whereabouts of his missing son. Satisfied with their answers, he spared their lives before departing with the information they had given him. Ezmerelda witnessed van Rich ten's act of mercy and was deeply moved by it.

Van Richten's Tragic Tale.

At the age of fifteen, Ezmerelda, still troubled by what her family had done to van Richten, ran away from home. After many harrowing adventures, she tracked down van Richten two years later. Thinking she was a Vistana assassin, he put a sword to her throat and threatened to spill her blood. Ezmerelda convinced him that she genuinely wanted to help him find his missing son, whereupon van Richten told her the saddest of tales. He had found his son, who had been transformed into a vampire spawn. When Erasmus pleaded to his father for salvation, van Richten granted his request by ending his existence.

Farewell.

Ezmerelda remained by van Richten's side for two years, helping him track down and slay many creatures of the night. But because van Rich ten could never bring himself to fully trust a Vistana, he kept secrets from her. The two vampire hunters got on each other's nerves, and their arguments became more frequent. At last, Ezmerelda suggested that they part company with some shred of their friendship still intact, and van Richten agreed.

Ezmerelda's Secret.

Since bidding farewell to van Richten, Ezmerelda has amassed a sizable personal fortune. On one of her less successful adventures, a werewolf bit off her right leg below the knee, and although she avoided being afflicted with lycanthropy, Ezmerelda was sidelined for months. She commissioned a master artisan to craft a prosthetic lower leg and foot. After several tries, he delivered a prosthesis that restored her mobility. She has since adapted well to the false appendage and takes care to hide it from view.

Family Tree

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More info (MandyMod):

Ezmerelda's Personality

Like Richten, I heavily referenced u/guildsbounty's guide for running Ez. Honestly, that post is pure gold and I can't praise it enough. However, also like Richten, I'll go ahead and list out a few key points.

A Younger Helsing

Like Richten, Ezmerelda is a viciously talented monster hunter. She should have pretty much all the same knowledge as her mentor. She knows the monsters of Barovia and how to hunt and kill them.
Her overwhelming amount of monster knowledge makes Ezmerelda quite confident. She shouldn't question her own knowledge and answer inquiries without hesitation or doubt. If new information surfaces to prove her wrong, she is unashamed to admit her error and will file away the new information so she won't make the same mistake twice. She sort of a quick witted prodigy when it comes to monster hunting.
Ezmerelda is always a bit overstocked with weapons and tools. She's the kind of person who would willingly carry the extra heavy backpack because she doesn't want to leave behind something she might need. When it became apparent that such weight would slow her down in combat, she got herself that wagon and never leaves it too far behind.

A Brash Loner

Ezmerelda is exceedingly brash and reckless. She pretty much throws herself into danger, fulling ignoring personal risk in order to kill her prey.
She's also a very goal oriented person. When she sets herself a task, Ezmerelda throws herself into it. She views the world not as a hiking trip, but as a series of races to various finish lines. That's not to say that Ez doesn't plan or lacks patience. She has both, but she tends to move at her own pace and gets frustrated by those who aren't as fast as she.
Ezmerelda is also really, really bad at working with other people. She's not a team player at all. That's mostly because she'd been trained by the already bitter van Richten. As such, if she ends up with your party, she'll forget to heal PCs or stabilize players who are down in favor of attacking the threat. She also won't generally explain herself or outline her plans unless outright asked to do so.
Now, Ez isn't intentionally rude. If a PC gets mad at her, yelling that "You should have told us!" or something similar, she's honestly upset that she did something wrong. Ezmerelda doesn't go rushing into a fight thinking, "lol I'm leaving the losers behind." She just acts on her instincts and goes forward, not realizing she's upsetting others. Ez is really just a bundle of poor people skills. ;p

Moral

At this point in her life, Ezmerelda could very well be a better monster hunter than Richten, simply for her youth. She's physically able to do slightly more than the 80-year-old Richten in a fight.
However, she's not nearly as ruthless as Richten, though she likes to think that she is. In the dam example I used above, for instance, Ezmerelda is the kind of person who tells herself that she would blow the dam. She would even tell the players she would do so with absolute certainty and without hesitation. But, if the event ever came to pass, she wouldn't be able to pull the trigger knowing so many innocents would die.
Ezmerelda sees herself as Richten's creation. And, subconsciously, as the inheritor of his legend. Though she doesn't realize she's doing it, Ezmerelda often emulates Richten's quirks and mindsets in an effort to be more like the old man. However, her own rashness and more solid morality often puts her at odds with her master. Think of Ez as a rebellious youth who's trying to both become her own person while honoring her father-figure, and finding it difficult to consolidate both sides.

Family History

Ezmerelda is a Vistani who has only spent about half her life with other Vistani. She knows all about curses and Tarroka and general Vistani custom and language, but is quite deficient in their culture-wide friendliness. Why? Because her family was not kind.

Crooks

We've all seen that kind of family, whether in life or in film. They're the parents that would rather spend their last dollar at the liquor store than on food for their child. The kind of family where making quick money is better than making honest money. If any of you are familiar with the family from Matilda or the innkeepers from Les Miserables, that's the kind of family I'm talking about.
Unfortunately, Ezmerelda grew up in such a household. Now, they weren't the worst of people. They weren't outright abusive and they didn't hoard mutilated corpses in their wagons or anything. They were just wholly dishonest and selfish folk.

Leaving an Impact

Though Ezmerelda didn't inherit her family's dishonesty, her upbringing shows itself in her mannerisms. Unlike most Vistani, she doesn't trust easily. And her prodigy level of uptake in monster hunting stems from a desperation for recognition from a parental figure (van Richten at the present).
Ezmerelda doesn't like talking about her parents and feels a great deal of shame if she must mention them at all. Though she and Richten don't get along well, the elder hunter is still the closest thing to father figure Ezmerelda has, and she strives for his approval. And that approval is quite hard to come by, since Richten struggles from differentiating his protege from the Vistani who stole his child. Talk about daddy issues. ;I

Overall

All those points aside, just remember that Ezmerelda is a pretty cool NPC. She's intelligent, fiercely efficient, a little rude (but unintentionally so), and an overall badass. Though she has a pretty good moral compass, she views it as a weakness and tries to hide it, even from herself. And though she and van Richten argue 90% of the time they're together, she still holds her mentor in the highest regard and yearns for his recognition.

Physical Description

Body Features

Has a prosthetic leg.

Social

Contacts & Relations

Rudolph Van Richten - Teacher and Master Monster Hunter

Alignment

Choatic Good

Species

Half-Orc

Year of Birth

411 AT 20 Years old

Parents (Adopting)

Dr. Rudolph van Richten

Gender

Female

Eyes

Grey

Hair

Light Brown

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Light Grey

Height

6'3"

Weight

210