Nerys Llanfair

[Nerys]

Name: Nerys Llanfair
Nicknames: Nerrie is the most commonly used pet name, though only people very close to her seem to be comfortable enough to use it.
Race: Werewolf; bitten.
Occupation: Beta Female, Medium, and Freelance Curator.
Gender: Female.
Skin Colour: Caucasian; pale.
Age: 520.
Clothing: For her day job Nerys leans towards conservative, suits with knee length skirts or tailored trousers, a variety of dark but warm coloured sweaters and shirts, suits that always carry a very obvious smart, feminine edge to them and could easily be descried as 'pretty'. Pinstripes, sometimes with trousers and gloves, or even a waist coat often give her a very 1920's look, one of her favourite eras when it comes to fashion. For evening functions, she is required to attend every so often through museums and galleries; Nerys has several dresses, matching shoes and purses, stolls and jackets - most things that would be expected of a woman of her apparent age. She has adapted through the changing times and fashions with ease and is always smart and presentable, whether at work or not. Out of office hours she opts for tailored jeans, A-line or pencil skirts and shirts or blouses, cardigans etc. She rarely wears Tee-shirts and is generally very pretty and feminine but mature about her choice of clothing; though she's not fussy when it comes to fashion she does have an eye for it and her wardrobe reflects that.
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 120lbs
Tattoos: None
Piercings: None.
Jewellery: Nerys wears a white gold pendant depicting two Gylfinir birds (Curlew) intertwined; it was given to her by her mate, and was handcrafted in Wales, her home country. Other jewellery includes a simple leather strapped watch and a charm bracelet and, on occasion, various brooches. Without pierced ears she will usually wear clip on earrings if the occasion calls for it.
Body Modifications: Nerys posses significant scarring over her right hip and the corresponding side of the small of her back. Her left inner elbow had a small, thin scar from a childhood mishap too.

Wolf Form

Build: Nerys' wolf form is small and slender, she looks much like a regular wolf, if larger. She lacks the muscles to be bipedal but makes up for the loss of height and weight of muscle with speed, aided by her relatively short hair. All the weight of her wolf form is in sinew, in her back and leg muscles that give her extreme reaction times and speed. Instead of hands with opposable thumbs like many werewolves, Nerys has much more paw like appendages. They are heavily padded allowing maximum grip and speed with a little discomfort as possible.
Height: 4'8"
Weight: 240lbs
Hair: A short, off white to pale blonde with a sparse but noticeable 'tabby' colouring in a darker strawberry blonde, almost red colour.
Eyes: Completely black.
Defining Marks: Nerys' wolf form has a rather long tail that helps her balance. A streak of white fur down her snout and around her paws, also help distinguish her.

Pack
Pack: Cole's Pack.
Position: Member.
Territory: Los Angeles; Cole's Territory.

Hair
Length: Mid back
Style: Long with deep layers, very full looking. She likes to keep it back in a bun or a smooth pony tail when she's working and she often twirls the wisps from her temples when she's thinking. Her hair is very soft and baby like. Most of the time though she leaves it down and free, sometimes with a light curl to it.
Colour: Blonde, highlighted slightly and naturally.

Facial Hair
Length: N/A
Style: N/A

Eyes
Colour: Green.
Oddities: Like all of her kind, her eyes will how the colour of her wolfen counterpart when she is feeling an emotion strongly or even simply to tease or intimidate. Nerys' eyes tend to blacken during of after encounters with the dead that truly rile her, or rather her wolf up; the two sides of her personality clash uncomfortably a great deal.

Personality: Nerys is a very levelled headed wolf. She thinks before she acts and is exceedingly logical in her day to day life over the past five hundred years. She is polite and self effacing, she rarely swears, or raises her voice and almost always puts others ahead of herself. She is a calm, centred individual who understands the value of patience and the cruelty of the world. When working Nerys' efficacy is rather bewildering. As a freelance Museum Curator she works for various Arts Establishments throughout the city. She is willing to be a stickler for detail and perfection when the occasion calls for it and she really quite enjoys her day to day job, it gives her something to focus on and gives her a sense of normalcy. This persona though is so far removed from the way she acts in and around the Hotel though, not many of her fellow pack mates are even aware of it.

Her ability to see the spirits of the dead and communicate with them in many different ways has left her with a distinctly sad aura that she cannot help; it edges into her smiles and the periphery of her words. She is prone to bouts of melancholy, becoming silent and very private she is likely to spend these times in her room or the library, or even just wandering the Hotel; she is likely to engage in little to no conversation with other pack members, without being rude. Often seen with a glassy, faraway expression she seems to spend most of her time deep in thought and to live inside her own head a lot. It is very often difficult to see what she's thinking and most of the time she keeps it that way; she believes it is very important to sustain the boundaries between life and death for the pack even though she cannot experience such separation for herself it is one of her ruling motivations. She is very modest and reserved when it comes to her 'gift' and in fact Cole Stanton is the only person who is truly aware of just how powerful a medium she is. She actually has a great deal of inner strength and conviction that comes form her centuries of experience - even if it is currently waning with an exhaustion that has been building for years.

She is something of a shadow of her former self, a watered down version of the woman she once was. Before moving to America she was able to laugh and joke despite her morbid history and macabre abilities, sustaining that because she had seen so much sorrow she worked extra hard not to succumb to it. She would have been more likely to speak her mind and stick to her guns whereas nowadays she leans towards passive and docile. Occasionally there is a glimmer of her fading personality, though it's rare that it rears its head. She actually doesn't much like the person she is at the moment, but sees no way of fixing herself, she is completely exhausted by her gift for which she has no relief, there is no off switch. In general Nerys always tries to see the good side in others and is by and large friendly, generous and warm, though she is severely torn by her loneliness and her memories of her deceased mate. She doesn't want to betray his memory and at the same time she is quite simply tired. Hand in hand with this conflict are the deep-seated, undeniable feelings she has for Keegan MacIntyre.

Weaknesses: Physically, apart from an intense aversion to silver which is normal for werewolves, strength is her weak point, ironically; she has little to none in werewolf terms but is still much stronger than the average human. She relies instead on wits, speed and agility. Ever since the death of her mate Nerys has been unable to be less than formal around most males, though she always remains polite knowing it's more her own problem than anyone else's she finds herself overrun with memories of Daffyd and a guilty feeling creeps inside of her.

As equally as it can be called strength her mediumship can be a weakness; it can easily keep her awake at night, sometimes for a few nights in a row, or fill her sleep with vivid dreams. It occupies her mind, possibly distracting her from potential danger and her sometimes blind drive to 'fix' can do her more harm than good as far as her general health goes. Along with that, Nerys' mother suffered a mental break and descended into madness because of the gift running through the female family members, something that had also happened to Nerys' grandmother and as far back through the family as she can trace. It seems part and parcel of the ability to see the dead and Nerys' biggest fear is that sooner or later the same thing will happen to her. She speculates that her change to a werewolf has helped keep this madness at bay, hopefully for good though that she cannot say for sure. The uncertainty weighs on her.

Abilities: Nerys possesses all the perks of lycanthropy; increased strength, speed and resilience as well as enhance hearing and sense of smell. She is also, due to her age, able to control her change and keep the wolf at bay during the cycle of the full moon. She is a good cook, holds onto her childhood skill for craft work; knitting, sewing and general things like that. She speaks fluent Welsh and French as well as English and a smattering of Latin, being a historian of sorts. She is a very organised and thorough researcher and finds the process therapeutic to a certain degree. Nerys is also an excellent cellist and has a passable, melodious voice for singing.

However in addition Nerys is a very powerful Medium. Nerys comes from a long line of gifted women in her mother's side of the family, and she is actually the last of the Llanfair women to carry the ability as the family essentially ended with her turning. She communicates fluently with the dead and is surrounded constantly by a supernatural air. Odd things happen to her on a daily basis. Some of the spirits want to simply to haunt her; some of them have messages for her, some simply want closure and therefore require her help which she gives if she can. In the past Nerys has displayed a wide range of abilities in her Mediumship though she reviles the modern names that have been given them: retrocognition, psychometry, automatic writing and chanelling are a few of the more definable abilities she has actively displayed. She has also performed several exorcisms in her past though not all of them have been successful and she doesn't talk about them.

Weapons: In a fight or flight situation she is more likely to run away than she is to fight unless more than just her life is at stake. If she fights she prefers it to be for others than for herself, though at the end of the day she would only be falling back on natural instinct rather than any training or finesse.

Prized Possessions: Her necklace is her most prized possession and she is never without it. Nerys plays the cello and has a 16th Century Stradivarius instrument from Italy which she loves dearly.

Gylfinir Necklace

Stradivarius Cello

Home(s): The Hyperion Hotel with the rest of the pack.

History: Nerys was born to Iowan and Mari Llanfair in 1486 in the northern wilderness of Wales. As a part of a farming family, she was raised in trying conditions and knew the true value of working hard to ensure survival from a very early age. She was soon joined by Aled, Cefin and then Aoife, two boys and another girl to bring the family up to six in total and as the oldest of the four a lot of responsibility was put upon her shoulders. Nerys and Aoife were groomed in the ways of the 'housewife', cooking, cleaning and all manner of craft work was included in their day to day 'lessons'; they would repair clothes, make rugs and quilts, braid straw and dry herbs whilst Aled and Cefin were educated equally intensely by their father outside. With only just over a year between them Aled and Nerys, or Nerrie as her family affectionately called her, were as thick as thieves; they shared in private jokes, aired their thoughts and childish fancies with one another and generally when they had time to spare from their extensive chores spent it with one another.

There was a quiet and comfortable kind of monotony to their lives, and the children failed to notice the fracturing of the home around them. None knew just why it was that Mari Llanfair was prone to bouts of melancholy, why she would sometimes get a distant look in her eyes and wander from room to room on her own, they had grown up with it and assumed it was just her way. As children, they saw nothing wrong with her. But Iowan had known soon after he had married his wife, years before, that there was something different about her.

From perhaps eight or ten years old -she finds it hard to recall the exact age- Nerys began hearing things and catching glimpses of figures out of the corner of her eyes. She told only Aled about it, and though she became increasingly scared and worried that she might be cursed, or evil, he always looked after her, though neither of them seemed to connect this to their mother's personality quirks. In such a small house and such a small family though, secrets were not exactly easy to keep and soon Mari was well aware of what was going on even if the rest of her family was not. Nerys had inherited her 'gift'.

Suffering in silence for almost fourteen years, since the birth of Nerys wore Mari down and after learning that the 'gift' was beginning to manifest in her eldest daughter, she cracked. One night she waited until her children were all asleep, until her husband had dozed off next to her and then crept from their room taking her pillow with her. She stole to the bed her two daughters shared and covered the eldest with the soft weapon, smothering her while she slept. Nerys was wrenched from sleep to airless consciousness, she already had no breath with which to scream and though she fought against her mother there was nothing she could do. Just as unconsciousness began to close in on her young mind, Mari was tackled by Iowan who had heard Aoife shrieking and Aled shouting from the room that adjoined his.

Wrestling with the mad woman he compelled Nerys to take her siblings downstairs and outside and hide until he came for them. She did as she was told; Nerys carried Aoife and Aled grabbed Cefin before taking his sisters hand and the four of them fled downstairs. But Mari proved a match for her husband, almost unnatural strength fuelled her limbs and she managed to escape his grasp and chase her children down. She cornered them and though Nerys tried to protect her siblings it was her that Mari was after first and foremost. She slammed her own daughter into the wall and then the floor, wringing her neck and once more almost succeeding in choking the life out of her before Iowan reappeared, injured and bleeding he struck his wife with enough force to render her unconscious. The terrified children clung to their father until he released them and instructed Nerys very seriously to put them back to bed. She did as she was told, knowing her brothers and sister wouldn't sleep but obeying her father as she had been raised to none the less. When she ventured downstairs again she found that her father had confined his beloved wife to the cellar of their farmhouse in order to stop her from hurting herself, or the children. She didn't question his decision and as they sat in the kitchen of the family home, Iowan told his daughter everything. Her abilities, her family's history; everything came to light.

Nerys took on her mother's duties, helped by her sister as much as possible, life continued albeit uncomfortably and with a new heavy silence to it that the children were not used to. Their father refused to even mention his wife, only he had contact with her in the form of delivering her meals three times a day; as if they were keeping a rabid animal downstairs. At night Mari clawed at the door and screams and wailed into the dark, often it was unintelligible and garbled but occasionally there was a lucid train of thought behind her screams; but Iowan stood firm and not once did he release her from her 'cell', nor did he entertain the thought of fetching a doctor; despite everything he loved his wife and he knew what fate would await her should any of the real reasons behind her madness come to light.

Aled and Nerys were adults by all accounts, with their siblings close behind when it seemed like the fight finally went out of their mother. She stopped screaming and ramming the door. She stopped everything, she never spoke or even really looked at Iowan anymore and he decided that it was safe for Nerys to begin taking over his duty of taking meals down the stairs when he was not able to do so himself, at first he went with her but when there was no change in Mari's almost catatonic state he deemed it safe once and for all. Then, over two years after the night that she had tried to kill her oldest daughter Mari finally gave up once and for all and hung herself from the beams on the cellar, using her bed sheets. Nerys found her body as she carried a meal down to her mother. In a severe state of shock, panicked and terrified, she hid the discovery from her siblings until her father returned from his trip into the nearest town of Glyff. The two of them buried Mari at night and told Nerys' siblings only once the grave was covered and the cross erected.

Iowan was sick with grief and Nerys worried about him constantly even though he propelled them onwards almost blindly determined that the family should not fall to pieces. He was not himself and when Aoife fell ill he left to fetch the doctor from Glyff and never returned, taking the horse and cart with him. Nerys was never sure why. The weeks slipped by and Aoife grew worse, by the time Aled had been able to secure the means for he him self to travel and fetch the doctor she had passed away leaving Nerys and her two brothers completely alone. The times grew harder still, three people could not run the farm especially well on their own and though they managed well enough life was by no means easy. Nerys, now in her twenties was seeing the dead at every turn and was sick with it, nauseous and suffering headaches and dizziness almost constantly her brothers fussed over her as they feared the worst; that soon she might leave them too. Nerys remained stalwart though and insisted that she could cope; she took it upon herself to go to Glyff once a week, proclaiming that she was useless when it came to the heavy lifting around the farm but she would take their left over produce to the market to sell. Though Aled and Cefin were less than happy about their sister travelling alone she would not be dissuaded. Nerys had grown into something of a stubborn woman.

It was on the return trip that her life took yet another turn.

Travelling by night was bad enough, but at the full moon it was that much worse. Nerys did not buy into the superstitions of her time, perhaps unusually so given her 'sight', but she thought little of the full moon above her as she drove the horse and cart through the woods at the base of the valley. Before she knew what was happening a huge, black animal shot out of the woods to her right and across the path. The horse balked, Nerys pulled on the reigns but despite her efforts the animal would not calm, and it broke free and disappeared into the night. Panicked and several miles from her home the blonde saw no option but to walk the rest of the way and return for the empty cart in the morning. Tugging her shawl around her she set off the way the horse had run, looking over her shoulder every few moments at the rustling of leaves or the snapping of a twig. She was convinced she was being followed.

It was not until she was spooked enough into running towards her home that she was really in trouble. The animal had indeed been following her, waiting for her to give it a chase; even then it was not much of one at all. Nerys veered into the woods, hoping to lose the animal amidst the bracken and shadows but it seemed her string of tragic bad luck was ever present and the animal caught up with her easily. Claws sliced through her skirt, wrapping around her hip and dragging her to the ground as she squeezed through a particularly dense thicket. Struggle as she might the animal would not release her, despite her screams and horrified thrashing it sank it's jaws into her right hip, tearing easily through her flesh right to the bone. She'll never know what it was that spooked the animal, Nerys didn't hear or see anything her self, but after a grunt and a growl it freed her and ran off into the woods.

Bleeding, bruised and in complete agony Nerys dragged herself to her feet and stumbled through the woods in what she hoped was the way home. She stumbled and fell several times, disorientated by the pain and it was dawn before she reached any sort of clearing; crying for help she fell again but no longer possessed the strength to get up, it was here her brothers found her unconscious but alive, though barely. She can only assume that they carried her home, when she awoke she was lying on the kitchen table, Aled's fingers threaded through hers and a cold cloth over her forehead, blankets and pillows on and around her. The horse, it seemed, had found its own way back to the family farm when Aled and Cefin had upon seeing it instantly gone looking for their sister. What was more, when they had gotten her home she had been so close to the brink of death that they hadn't even dared to carry her upstairs, instead laying her on the table their absent father had carved; it had been two days since her attack and she was getting better. Her wounds were healing. Nerys survived, but she wasn't the same and she knew it immediately, her hearing was better, her sense of smell unparalleled, though she didn't know what it all meant until her first change. It was agony.

She ripped her way unhindered through the livestock that remained in the sheds and awoke near the lake at the bottom of the valley, covered in the evidence of her night time activities. She knew immediately she could no longer care for her brothers, she couldn't trust herself to be near them and so she made arrangements for them to stay with their aunt and uncle, their father's sister and her husband who lived on the opposite outskirts of Glyff. With the livestock slaughtered by her own hands they had nothing more to hold onto at their family home, they moved everything they could fit into the cart, thankful that at least one horse had survived what her brother's thought was an animal attack. Nerys travelled with them but left them once they arrived at their relative's farm, promising to return but knowing that she was very likely lying.

She spent several years wandering Wales and into England, depressed and alone and still not free of the dead that haunted her dreams and followed her footsteps. At one stop along her journey, a small village in the north-west things began to crumble again, she let slip her abilities accidentally and the town flew into an uproar about a witch in their midst; Nerys was locked in the ramshackle jail and sentenced to be burnt at the stake. She entertained the thought of escaping; she knew she could if she wanted to given her speed and strength but instead she simply accepted it.

The medium had had enough of life and quite simply she felt ready to die.

This was how she met her first pack. She had tried to restrain herself through the full moons but on occasion she had escaped and wreaked havoc, the pack it seemed had been following the trail of these mini-slaughters through their territory with the intention of disposing of the rogue if need be. By the time they caught up with her, Nerys was already on the pyre, bound and stripped to her undergarments. The straw was lit and the flames beginning to lick at the hem of her gown when the rescue was launched, before she was truly aware of what was going on she had been whisked off the platform and into the arms of a man on a horse, riding away from the village. The man, it turned out, was a fighter from a small pack; Daffyd Aphowell. He took her back to the pack home, accompanied by a group of fighters where she was given the choice of staying with them or moving on out of their territory. Nerys decided to stay, cared for and watched over by Daffyd whom she grew very close to very quickly. Despite their age difference they became mates within a few years, Daffyd was convinced that on occasion he could look into his mate's eyes and feel like a child compared to her and all she had lived through.


(History continued below)

[Nerys]

(History cont.)

Nerys seemed cured of her melancholy, she spent every moment she could with Daffyd, he made her laugh and made her feel younger than weight of her years had allowed. She found a niche within the pack, one her abilities and personal timbre afforded her as someone to talk to and confide in, someone who could contact the deceased families and lost pack members with ease and sensibility. It was because of her compassion and open ear and heart that when, albeit tragically both beta positions were suddenly left unfilled, Daffyd and Nerys were natural choices and they assumed the roles without challenge. It seemed though that the Betas had the worst luck in the pack, whoever they happened to be; less than one hundred years after they had become the Beta pair, Daffyd was gravely injured in defending the pack's territory. Fighters carried him back to the pack home where silver poisoning claimed him before Nerys could speak to him, but not before he appeared as a spirit to the medium.

Alone once more, Nerys sank into a deep depression and sometime after Daffyd's death she decided she had to leave England for good; there were too many warm memories and too many close, sympathetic pack mates and she needed to grieve alone. So, her wolf mastered sometime before -indeed Nerys took control of her change early into her lycanthropy- she boarded a ship and crossed the Atlantic ocean. Once she had found her way to America she did as little travelling as she could manage, moving every few years to avoid suspicion and prejudice and -though she is ashamed of it now- using her gift as a way to make ends meet. It was during this time of her life that she fell in with Cole's pack as they defended their territory. Nerys, caught in the scuffle was injured and when she regained consciousness she was in the pack's home where once again she was offered sanctuary should she want it; she has stayed with Cole's pack ever since.

Things were different this time. She no longer performs channelling within the pack, in her own words it opens more wounds than it heals and she is honestly unable to do it with an easy conscience anymore. Through this she has forged the base of a strong, sibling like relationship with Irina Bianchi who implored her to contact her sister upon her passing towards the start of the current century. It was the first time she opened herself and her powers to someone other than Cole and the level of trust she and the female fighter share is important to Nerys.

Though most of her relationships with the pack are on a cordial but somewhat distant level the medium has developed deep and powerful feelings for one of the pack fighters, Keegan MacIntyre. Her wolf feels a strong sense of devoted loyalty to Daffyd and holds an abjection to other men in her life, but though at first she tried to deny the feelings to herself because of this she has found she can no longer do that and simply accepts that she cannot change her feelings but won't do anything about them; she seems herself as far too much of a burden in many ways. That aside Nerys is something of a shadow in the day to day movements and routines of the pack, she can seem distant and even aloof, though once spoken to she's obviously about as far from the latter as possible.