There is much speculation and rumor surrounding the scars of Catherine Weiss. Popular belief is that they are the result of a broken jaw during an attempted rape as a mortal that Dark Ages medicine could not properly heal. But in fact, Catherine wears these scars intentionally as a reminder of her past. Not of the rumored rape and jaw injury as a mortal, which of course would have been quite easily repaired with her vampiric vitae at the time of her Embrace, but of the actual ordeal that scarred not only her face, but her very soul for all eternity. An event that she has never revealed to anyone:
Shortly after her Embrace, she left her sire and her clan and returned in despair to her home town to the only man she had ever loved, as any teenager in love would do. She revealed her nature to him and pleaded for his help to cure her of her condition. In a desperate attempt to regain her mortality, she and her lover reached out to a wise priest of high esteem in the Church: A holy man of True Faith. They enacted a plan: She would be placed upon the holy altar in the House of God at midnight in view of the Blessed Virgin and she would imbibe thrice blessed Holy Water to cleanse her soul from the inside out of her demonic corruption.
Ecaterina, as she was known at the time, willingly submitted to this plan in a desperate attempt to return to the life of a normal teenager stolen from her by her sire, with her True Love looking on in apprehension. As the priest gently tilted her head back and the Holy Water touched her lips, her skin began to blacken and smoke as though the water were liquid sunlight. Infused with the True Faith of the priest, her lover, and of Ecatarina herself, the water explosively charred her lower face and esophagus and she immediately succumbed to a Final Death Frenzy. The priest was killed instantly, showering the altar beneath her with blood, and possessed by her dying Beast, she leapt from the altar and pounced on her lover, her one True Love, draining his blood under smoking eroded lips and blackened teeth until there was nothing left of him but a lifeless husk cradled in her arms.
It was only by the virtue of consuming the vitae of her one True Love that her vampiric body was able to expel what was left of the Holy Water and heal enough from the burning of True Faith in water form that she was able to avoid Final Death that night, though her jaw, lower face, and throat were horribly scarred far beyond any healing ability granted by her vampiric blood. After a period of frenzied grief at the murder of her one true love by her own hand, she donned a veil, in mockery of the Madonna looking kindly upon the carnage from her perch above the church apse, to conceal her now grotesque visage and returned to her clan as the Ecaterina or Catherine you know today.
Wise Kindred know that her age and waxing power have long since gifted her the ability to heal her disfigurement with little effort and regain the near angelic beauty she enjoyed as a young mortal woman. Some suggest she wears the scars to enhance her Presence and terrify mortals. Others think it's to remind other Kindred of the Final Death that awaits any who cross her.
One Kindred has come to believe that her deliberate, almost pathological, refusal to heal these scars and regain her lost beauty is self-imposed penance for her crime of murdering the only person she would ever love, and in this way she clings to the last few shreds of humanity a nearly thousand year old Kindred has left.
Shortly after her Embrace, she left her sire and her clan and returned in despair to her home town to the only man she had ever loved, as any teenager in love would do. She revealed her nature to him and pleaded for his help to cure her of her condition. In a desperate attempt to regain her mortality, she and her lover reached out to a wise priest of high esteem in the Church: A holy man of True Faith. They enacted a plan: She would be placed upon the holy altar in the House of God at midnight in view of the Blessed Virgin and she would imbibe thrice blessed Holy Water to cleanse her soul from the inside out of her demonic corruption.
Ecaterina, as she was known at the time, willingly submitted to this plan in a desperate attempt to return to the life of a normal teenager stolen from her by her sire, with her True Love looking on in apprehension. As the priest gently tilted her head back and the Holy Water touched her lips, her skin began to blacken and smoke as though the water were liquid sunlight. Infused with the True Faith of the priest, her lover, and of Ecatarina herself, the water explosively charred her lower face and esophagus and she immediately succumbed to a Final Death Frenzy. The priest was killed instantly, showering the altar beneath her with blood, and possessed by her dying Beast, she leapt from the altar and pounced on her lover, her one True Love, draining his blood under smoking eroded lips and blackened teeth until there was nothing left of him but a lifeless husk cradled in her arms.
It was only by the virtue of consuming the vitae of her one True Love that her vampiric body was able to expel what was left of the Holy Water and heal enough from the burning of True Faith in water form that she was able to avoid Final Death that night, though her jaw, lower face, and throat were horribly scarred far beyond any healing ability granted by her vampiric blood. After a period of frenzied grief at the murder of her one true love by her own hand, she donned a veil, in mockery of the Madonna looking kindly upon the carnage from her perch above the church apse, to conceal her now grotesque visage and returned to her clan as the Ecaterina or Catherine you know today.
Wise Kindred know that her age and waxing power have long since gifted her the ability to heal her disfigurement with little effort and regain the near angelic beauty she enjoyed as a young mortal woman. Some suggest she wears the scars to enhance her Presence and terrify mortals. Others think it's to remind other Kindred of the Final Death that awaits any who cross her.
One Kindred has come to believe that her deliberate, almost pathological, refusal to heal these scars and regain her lost beauty is self-imposed penance for her crime of murdering the only person she would ever love, and in this way she clings to the last few shreds of humanity a nearly thousand year old Kindred has left.
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