From SuspireWiki
Tara Sayer was born in 1962 to Jody and Caleb Sayer near Atlanta, Georgia. She and her family lived on a small farm where Mr. Sayer worked the land and Tara, with her younger brothers and sisters were reared on hard work with the animals. As her parents were both undereducated they had high hopes that Tara would be the first in the family to graduate high school and go on to college. Their dream was cut short, however, by her father's death in 1969.
Her mother sank quickly into a deep depression and as the children starved CPS was left no choice but to remove them from the house. Tara along with her brothers and sisters (4 total), having no other family that was willing to take them in were sent to the worst place possible for a child, into the care of the government.
Tara was shuffled back and forth between foster homes and schools. Some were what could be considered good homes but more often than not they were bad. Tara was beaten and abused mentally, physically and sexually. And when she told her case worker about the abuses she was written off as a disturbed child with a penchant for lying. It didn't take long before the label fit and she became a statistic of the system.
At the age of 10 she had her first cigarette, and by the time that she was 12 she was a heavy drinker and a drug user. It wasn't that she was being shuffled from home to home anymore but that the families that she was placed with weren't able to handle the child, who'd by then become a hellion. She lied and cheated and stole what ever she could get her hands on. She ditched school in favor of running the streets of Atlanta which at the time were a melting pot of social and racial conflict. And one day she just didn't come back and the social workers didn't bother to exert too much time and effort into finding her. She disappeared.
In truth she'd joined up with a group of likeminded teenagers in the beginning of an interacial communal housing project. The basic tenents of the project were as follows: respect and protection. And for a short time they acted as a family. The end of the short project came at Tara's hands. Her lack of respect for authority and her by now mature drug and alcohol problem tore the project wide open. She was evicted from her new family and this time took to the streets by herself. Using the skills that she's developed in foster care she eeked out a living by lying, cheating and stealing. It was in this manner that she coasted through a majority of her life as a teenager. When she turned 17 she'd had enough of life in the boonies so she made her way to a truck stop just outside of town and hitched a ride to NYC.
Her last stop was at a freight depot on Webster Avenue in the Bronx. It was well past midnight and as it was the middle of January it was likely 30 degrees outisde and of course she had nowhere to go. She jumped a turnstyle and got on the subway for the first time in her life thinking that she'd spend the night on the train. At least it was warm. And it was warm until a group of Guardian Angels on their nightly patrol decided that a little girl was a danger to the city's safey and showed her what for. She was dumped, rather uncerimoniously at the exit of the Spring street station on the Lower East Side bruised battered and not just a little bloody.
She woke up some hours later in a room that she'd never seen before with a guy she'd never met before stroking her hair and murmuring something about her thinking about getting better. Tara didn't really understand what the hell this kid was talking about but she was in so much pain that getting better was all that she could think about. And then she did. She couldn't, at the time, explain it. But she'd used a generous amount of vite to heal a serious wound to her lung. Had this kid, Roger, not intervened she would have died in the subway station. It didn't take her long to find herself a place in the niche of squatters on the Lower East Side. It was nice but there was something ... missing. She was pretty clean by then, no major addictions but she wanted ... something.
And then it hit her, the cold sweats, the fever, the shakes. She was coming off something and she was coming off hard. She pulled herself off the pad she was sleeping on and drug herself to Roger's room. They'd become a little more than casual aquaintences by then and she knew that he shared her history of addiction. She knew it was dangerous to be alone and that he would be willing to see her through the come down.
Except that it wasn't a come down that she found there in his room. Instead, after watching him tear open a vein and then heal it up in front of her eyes, she found the truth about happened to her that night in the room. She was a Ghoul going through withdrawal from vitae. He told her what it was like to be a ghoul, the strength, the disciplines, and most importantly, the high. Being young and rash she and Roger hashed out a plan - a stupid and ill concieved plan, but a plan none the less. They would hit the road together, find vampires and take vitae. Fuck being servants and fuck being slaves. They were going to do it their way.
They worked well as a team. Roger would find the neonates and point them out to Tara and she would let the Kindred "seduce" her. She'd invite them out to "talk" where Roger was waiting, usually with lighters or stakes and "convince" them to give up their vitae. It didn't take long for the local Kindred to figure out what the two were up to. The consensus demanded their deaths. They were threats to the Maquerade. The Carthians, however, really couldn't bring themselves to kill the two kids since essentially the two were their own faults. They devised their own plans. Ghoul them for real, get them bound and then separate them.
It didn't take long for the pair to fall right into the trap. There are only so many neonates in a city, and one night, without any warning, Roger decided to pick out a bigger prize. He pointed Tara at the Prefect and went off to wait. The powerful kindred took, by some accounts, as long as 5 seconds to gain complete control of the situation, and the Carthians did exactly what they'd planned on. The pair were forcibly bound to different kindred, and forbidden from contact.
Tara was sent off to Los Angeles with a Daeva and for 10 years she served as a mostly faithful ghoul. The love of the binding kept her, for the most part, from missing Roger through she did, when she could, press new arrivals for information about other cities hoping to catch some news about him. She feared the worst though and after just a few months she gave into what her regent told her: She'd never see him again. She was a faithful ghoul, an addict, doing what was asked of her to get the blood and any modicum of approval from the man that she now belonged to. He was not unsymphatetic however and felt badly for her forced enslavement. When the time came for his torpor he broke her of her addiction and held her through her rapid aging then sent her to a Ventrue to have her memory "fixed."
The fix lasted about 3 years before she started to question the memories that had been implanted. There were things just didn't seem to connect and flow the way that the rest of her life did. Huge chunks of random things were missing or seemed to go out of order like how she'd ended up in NYC or even why she left for Los Angeles. But she had a decent life in Los Angeles, working as a promotor for a really well known night club. She had a great West Hollywood apartment and really, what did she have to complain about? But as much as she tried to ignore it, the holes in her memory and the strange dreams and nightmares she couldn't. She tried going into therapy, hypnosis was the suggestion of her friends. But it was a crock and didn't do her any good. So instead she started to write out the life that she rememebered and pushed through the odd sequences of events or the missing memories. Slowly sometime in 1995 the pieces fell into place. She was, at one point, a ghoul. She did, at one point, have awesome powers. She was, for a short time, immortal.
She wanted it again. She threw as much of her clothes as she could fit into a duffle bag and left town with out notice. She bought a one way ticket on a GreyHound to New York City and spent a week almost jumping out of her skin with anticipation for the blood that she expected, somehow, that she would just run into. She didn't really have much of a plan. Aside from "find a vampire" she wasn't even sure where to start. She got off the bus at Port Authority and quickly got lost in the uncharted land of Midtown Manhattan. After wandering in the cold December night she managed to make her way downtown to the LES. Though it was a familiar area it had changed just enough that she wasn't entirely sure where things were so she did what she knew. She scammed her way into CBGBs and got in good with some people at the bar. She spent two weeks couch surfing before finally she managed to make a connection with some one in the LES squats that she'd live in so many years ago. But the atmosphere wasn't the same. There were plans from the city, everyone was scared and she did everything she could to help the organization of squatters to keep the rights of their homes. She worked so hard with this that for a time she completely forgot about the blood, immersing herself in a passion for the cause.
It was January 17th, again, and as far as she knew it was just another night. She'd gone out with some friends and partied entirely too hard. It was nearly dawn by the time that she stumbled back to the squat and into her room. At least, she thought it was her room and even through the haze of the drugs and alcohol it struck her as strange that there was some one on her bed, but all the same it was nice to have a warm body to tuck up next to.
It wasn't until around noon when she woke up to the sound of sirens zooming past the squat that she got a glimpse of the warm body she was tucked up against all night long. He looked familiar somehow but with the hangover she could barely be trusted to pick herself out of a lineup. It took three different arguments for them to recognize each other and just five minutes later they'd fallen easily back into the roles they'd served all those years ago. Tara planned and did the thinking. Roger pulled off the scams.
Another 5 minutes and they had a plan. This plan boiled down to two words "get vitae" and thankfully it was a lot more sophisticated than their first "get vitae" plan had ever been. They were going to use Roger's dead regent's name and promise favors for blood. It worked, for a time. And when they started to get questioned about the regent's whereabouts they knew enough of the Kindred population to find others to scam out of their vitae. Between their scamming and the quickly growing tensions on the LES they were kept incredibly busy.
The Summer of 1996 was a tumultuous time in New York. Tensions had been building all winter. The Housing Authority wanted to reclaim and sell a number of squats, some of which had been occupied for as long as twenty years. The parks department and the new residents of the rapidly gentrifying Lower East Side wanted the homeless tent city and drug dealers' paradise moved out of Tompkins Square Park. Legal battles waged on both sides but far from the court rooms the truth of the matter was plain. There was a large human population caught up in a kindred proxy war between the Carthians and Invictus. In the thick of it all, Roger and Tara, Germ and Mouse, by most accounts, were stretched in two directions. Trying to aid and blend with the scores of homeless and squatters being evicted and turned out on the street while learning enough about the local kindred population to successfully keep access to vitae was sufficiently time consuming to be all encompassing.
Then in August, the largest battle of the proxy war exploded on the paths and lawns of Tompkins Squate Park and all across the LES. The homeless had been flocking there, fleeing gentrification and the encroaching middle class for years. They'd gathered together in a tent city which quickly became a haven from drug dealers and all manner of what might be called "undesirable elements" in a society. To Roger though, these were just people, and more than that, friends, a community. Memories abounded of the police riot from eight years earlier, but this time was different. This wasn't just a police riot, this was a full scale running battle that engulfed the park and numerous squats in the area. The squatters were forced to close their doors to newcomers and fortify themselves in their homes. Spikes were hammered into rooftops to prevent police helicopters from landing and doors were barricaded. Squatters began to prepare for the very real possibility of having to fight to defend their homes, and amidst all the chaos, it was easy to miss the kindred influence.
Germ and Mouse were not oblivious though. They were in the thick of it all, and their respect amongst the squatter community made them invaluable liasions for the local Carthians who found themselves rapidly being pushed out of the LES entirely. Knowing the Carthians had friends and sway in every sector of New York's police and government, they connived whenever possible to be able to direct those influences towards the most obvious needs of the squatters on the front lines of the shadow war. Hospitalization and bail for those hurt in riots and protests, legal battles and public outrage over the police treatment of the homeless and homesteaders, almost all of it stemmed from some Carthian influence or other, and no small measure of that was motivated by the pair's constant and tireless efforts. They fought on the front lines all day and ran information and curried favors all night, and all in the name of their invisible domitor who would undoubtedly make good all the favors. By the time the war ended in, generally what would be called an Invictus victory, with the number of squats drastically reduced and Tompkins Park cleared out for the future construction of a dog run, there scheme was running rather thin. In a bid to save their way of life and keep themselves fed, they'd gone back to plan they'd already worn out, and now they'd completely taken it too far. It was time to go.
Having scammed their last drop of vitae in NYC they took to the road with all of their possesions (a whole two knapsacks of clothes) and found transport to the closest city of a decent size, Philadelphia. They figured that it would be difficult to find an in to new vitae sources but didn't realize just how hard it really was. While their days were spent in blurry hazes of alcohol, drugs and sex to slack the cravings all of their nights were spent combing the rack, trying to find any hint of Kindred activity. For three weeks they scoured and came up empty handed. They lucked out one night when they were walking down South and happened across a Kindred who wasn't able to contain his beast. He freaked out and caused a fairly minor Masquerade breech which Mouse and Germ swooped in to help contain, collecting vitae for payment from the neonate.
While using this neonate for vitae worked for a couple months Mouse knew that it wasn't going to last forever, they'd gotten too close to lasping to continue the way they'd been operating. They needed a definate plan so one day they sat down to consider what it was that they knew about vampires.
A: They drink blood and don't eat or drink anything else. B: They have at least two groups, the romans and the chain. C: They have something called the Masquerade which means that no one is supposed to know about them, but sometimes people do know (like ghouls). D: Sometimes they seriously freak the fuck out. E: They don't breathe and have no misty breath in the winter.
Using what little they knew about vampires they figured out a slightly better method of finding Kindred which involved, largley, Mouse's use of Auspex. At the time that mostly meant just watching carefully and waiting for a slip up, finding the strange fellow whose drink never seemed to get drank and what not. It wasn't by any means a perfect system, but it worked remarkably well. Eventually their Philadelphia blackmail case got word out to his sire, and by December there was enough kindred ire against the pair to force them to leave, so they began city hopping their way on west. The first stop was Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh presented the first real test of their system, and it exposed a very big flaw. Tara spotted an obvious suspect in a bar not two nights into their stay. His features were drawn and gaunt, people were creeped out by him and left a wide berth, he never even bothered to order drinks but the staff seemed to know better than to harass him. All attempts to get close to the man seemed to fail. He apparently had no desire to feed on either of the less than hygenic pair, and he was scrupulous with the masquerade. After a week of surveillance the pair got impatient, and tried to orchestrate a situation by which they could extort vitae out of what they did not, at the time, realize, was a rather potent elder, who had in fact, had ghouled bodyguards watching his back almost all of the time. They never once had even considered the potential for other ghouls to thwart their system
On a cold Christmas night, the pair decides they'll give themselves a gift and finally get some blood out of this creature. They move to follow him from the usual place, unaware of his own pair of ghouls following them. The elder was ready for the trap, he lead all four away from prying eyes. The ghouls moved in to protect their master and eliminate the threat, and the vampire turned and smiled so strangely at Germ and Mouse. They knew something bad was going to happen, and turned to face the oncoming ghoul menace. Having been ghouls for quite a while, and being a rather potent team, and with a little Christmas luck, they managed not to die there in that alley. The ghouls who fell upon them were ill prepared for a real supernatural threat, having suspected the strange pair that watched their master to be at worst, witch hunters. Roger and Tara, to put it simply, beat the living shit out of the pair. Surprised, but beginning to perceive what was going on, the elder kindred, in the spirit of the holidays, didn't kill any of the 4 ghouls on the spot. As punishment to his useless servants, he fed Germ and Mouse generously while they watched, and ordered them to never return to what he called "his city" again. It was time to leave Pittsburgh.
They travel through smaller cities through the winter, refining their methods and learning new tricks. For a few years they moved through large cities. Indianapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver and for two years they ran through cities as quickly as they ran through the stolen vitae in their veins. Then one night in Las Vegas something went wrong. They'd been watching a lick they assumed was a neonate from his reactions to some other Kindred. The story differs on both sides. According to Mouse, Germ moved in too early and according to Germ, Mouse was late but either way, they got their vitae, leaving a torpored lick behind them which was not their intention. Heady with vitae and a lingering high from some drug or another the two got into what was literally a throw down fight. Words and fists were thrown with the intent to hurt. And hurt they did. The resultant broken egos and broken bones were enough to split the pair up for a timespan of exactly two weeks. They ran into each other at the bar and pretended like nothing at all had happened. There was no apology and no mention of the fight, nor has there been since.
There was a short lived pregnancy, Mouse miscarried sometime in her second trimester. And it was at that point in her life that everything went to all fucking hell in her mind. The miscarriage was bad, and she nearly died in the process, using almost her entire supply to keep herself alive. She and Germ panicked backtracked to hit an old mark. While the hit itself was successful the party afterward - celebration of Mouse's ability to "have fun" again - was not as it was quickly broken up by some lucky police officers. Germ found himself locked up, without bail and placed in a 28 day treatment center by order of the state.
Mouse hunkered down and waited. It was while she was waiting that she was recognized by a now Nomadic Carthian who remembered Mouse from her time spent in Los Angeles as a ghoul. He embraced her, thinking that she'd been on the prowl for all these years - that she'd done such good work for the cause. It must be what she wanted, it was almost certainly what the Movement needed. Except that an embrace was the absolute last thing that Mouse ever wanted. Upon realization of her new condition Mouse frenzied and frenzied hard.
Tara was a vampire now and resting in a state of panicked torpor. Though the torpor was short lived she was kept secluded, her sire taking to task the "correction of her eduction," clearing out nearly 20 years of misconceptions about life for Kindred. When Tara was released it was to find that Germ was gone, having been released from his rehab months prior. He was nowhere to be found, presumably back on the road to find her. Tara was distraught but stayed on with her sire and his band of nomadic Carthians, though for reasons she would never express to her sire, she never formally joined the Movement. For a few years she lived a nomad's life, running from town to town, listening and watching as her sire spread the word - always keeping an eye out for Germ but mostly just trying to survive.
She and some new friends were holed up in Tennessee when she came across a newspaper from Atlanta. Bored and with nothing else to do to occupy herself for the rest of the night she flipped idly through the pages, coming across the obituaries when she saw a familiar picture. It couldn't be - but it was. Her younger sister died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 37. She was survived by two children, Tara and Marcus.
Most of the sense of sentimentality had long since been beaten out of Mouse, but there was something there - knowing that her youngest sister had named a daughter after her, knowing that she was left alone and motherless like she was once...
So Mouse bid her farewells to her friends and headed for Atlanta.