SETH NIGHTLORD FROM TRINITY BLOOD
Here it is, the stuff of futuristic fairy tales: an overburdened planet, an ambitious project and four test tube children bred to be leaders of a new and hopeful people. But their story has no happily ever afters; it's a cautionary tale.

The last of the four genetically modified children made to be the leaders of the Red Mars project, Seth was created in Canada ten years after the twins Abel and Cain. Lieutenant-ranked and heading the scientific department of the UNASF, it was Seth who discovered the Bacillus and Krusnik nanomachines compatible only with the four leaders due to their genetic enhancements, all unknowing of the disasters her work in cultivating them would wreak on the two worlds. These nanomachines at first seemed to be blessings, aiding the colonists in surviving the harsher conditions of Mars as they integrated the Bacillus into their bodies and the Crusnik saving the fatally injured Cain, due to Seth's desperate action to prevent his death. Both nanomachines however had their role in the war that followed; the Armageddon of Earth and Mars began as a struggle for control over the alien technology and nanomachines while the Crusnik drove Cain to insanity, taking him over completely to tragic results that would haunt them all nearly a thousand year laters.

As leaders, it seemed that the fates of the four Crusniks were bound to bloodshed and death as even after the civil wars that had destroyed much of both planets were followed by yet another. This time, the struggle was between the colonist Returners (the Bacillus-integrated Methuselah) and the remaining humans (Terrans). The Crusniks became divided over the matter, Lilith Sahl sided with the Terrans and with her knowledge shored up the strength of their faction greatly while Abel, Cain and Seth led the Methuselahs. Despite this, the war was not going in the favor of the Methuselah and Abel was wavering due to Lilith's influence.

The pivotal point came when Cain, under the guise of peace negotiations, summoned Lilith to the Ark only to kill her. Upon being discovered by Abel and Seth, this fragmented the siblings even further as they battled against Cain in their rage and ejected him out of the Ark. Afterward Abel buried and mourned Lilith effectively disappearing from the world and Seth was left as the remaining leader of the Methuselah. Their paths parted and would not meet again until over 800 years later when Seth ruled her New Human Empire as the near-mythic Augusta Vradica and in shadow under the many guises she maintained.

Since the founding of the empire, when Seth led the surviving Methuselah to Eastern Europe and restored the ravaged land to become their home, Seth had created a powerful and isolated empire with herself as Augusta Vradica at its heart, the Great Mother of all Methuselah whose word was absolute law and who shielded herself ever behind veils and modified voices and unbeknownst to many even with the use of body doubles. She formed her own utopia and though many suspected her as a mere puppet ruler, she commanded a formidable intelligence network with the aid of Mirka Fortuna and not only anticipated plots against her but also laid traps for the conspirators. It was one such trap that Abel Nightroad, Esther Blanchett and Ion Fortuna became inadvertently enmeshed in, setting a stage for the reunion of the Crusnik siblings and the revelation of the true forces behind their common enemy, the Rosencreuz Orden.

[character abilities]: Crusnik 03 and all the badassery and possible insanity that comes with it. Along with the speed and agility and high damage threshold of Crusniks, she is also able to create tuning forks or tridents formed of blood and attacks with highly concentrated sound waves to reduce her targets to dust. She also served as a scientist and headed that department of the UNASF and claims to be a med student as one of her public Terran cover personas.

[character personality]:
Despite looking and at times pretending to be thirteen, Seth Nightlord has got almost a thousand years of living behind those bright green eyes. She's a puzzle of a girl who scattered her own pieces: Empress, tea-seller, Crusnik 03, the scientist and abandoned child and the face she wears for you can tell you who you are to her. As the pretty Terran tea-seller who just happened to be passing by~, she introduces herself as simply Seth, is playful with a mischievous and teasing bent to her humor, gives elusive non-answers to questions about her and is far more interested in you.

As the near-mythic Empress Augusta Vradica, she's both distant and all-encompassing. Distant, as the mother who wraps herself in veils and mysteries, holds council while hidden and rarely appears in public and whose knowledge of the workings within her Empire causes both awe and anger. And yet as unreachable as she is, she has made herself central to the the Methuselah not only in making her rule as practically a matter of faith but also in maintaining the balance between the Methuselah and Terrans both inside the empire and outside.

But few know just how much she does to keep her Empire together and how far she might be willing to go. She manipulates events to lay out a trap in an assassination plot against her, even going so far as to use one of her own darling children, Ion Fortuna as bait being very much a 'the ends justifies the means' sort of ruler.

Despite the deceptive nature of her interactions with her own children, Seth is deeply involved with her Empire and her Methuselah. She seeks out her Methuselah to meet with them and check in on them as they grow. Despite her manipulation of Ion Fortuna, she establishes protection for him by appointing Astaroth Aslan to protect his group and she seeks him out to keep an eye on him as the events of the plot unfold and aids him when Esther is injured. She investigates aspects of the plot against Vradica herself. Even the purpose of her veils and body doubles was to allow her the freedom to explore her empire freely, to meet her Methuselah without the formalities of her rank and even as a subordinate Terran.

But as Vradica or as Seth, certain things are the same. Her curiosity which compels her to continue to involve herself and observe her world and her people closely. Her decisiveness, as the Empress whose word none in the Empire can disobey, as the med student who carries her authority despite her playfulness and keeps calm in a crisis to save an injured Esther and even in the days of Mars, as herself when she makes that fateful decision to inject the Crusniks into Cain and to choose to continue the war despite Lilith's choice, Abel's indecision and Cain's growing madness. And her loneliness, as the child left by her mother and brothers, as the Empress with few to trust and too much to do in an empire that she seems to have built to fracture without her, as Seth who has created so many roles to play to make herself a part of everything.

[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: After chapter 34 (The Neverending Story) of the manga.

[journal post]:
I like surprises as much as the next pretty girl but this is something else altogether. A romantic getaway to an unknown place for little old me? You really shouldn't have~... whoever you are. Boldness in a suitor can be charming but I'm done sightseeing so can we let this surprise blind date end with fond memories?

Or if you insist on keeping me here, at least leave your name and some flowers~ ♥

[third person / log sample]:
When they brought her word of another of her children's death, it was near to breaking dawn in the world outside and it was no more than ten minutes after she had slipped back into her palace of veils and dealing the man his death herself. Her Yeniçeri were unsurprised at her lack of surprise. The all-knowing Augusta Vradica, she is, was and always will be, and they could not conceive of her as anything but eternal. And absolute.

She had worked tirelessly to make it so.

He had been a noble of high standing though his ambitions and gifts had lain not in governance but in science, the last of the trinity that ruled in the empire. For the greater glory of the Empire, the future had been his religion and science his prophet and he'd worked under the Empress' program, swayed by her encouraging speech of freedom from their limitations to rise above their weaknesses.

For not even two moons can make one forget the sun, she'd said and thought of her brother; perhaps the hope had been transmitted through her modified voice and into her scientist who'd dared higher and darker things than the empire regulations allowed.

Disappearing Terrans and low-ranked Methuselah from the fringes of the Empire, rumors of experiments carried out on unwilling subjects, of deals struck with smugglers for aqua vitae, the trail of vipers all over her empire.

Seth no longer remembered when she'd stopped asking herself what the others would have done as she had at the beginning, first abandoned and still grieving, asking what they would do, what each of them would do, the beloved leader and reviled madman and the mother she had hoped and feared to become. They had always been in her mind, ever close and ever remembered but they could not rule in her place. So she'd learned to become swift and decisive, learned the feints and parries of politics and her necessary lies.

She'd ordered the investigation and made her own, gathering and feeding information from her Terrans, subtly directing the investigation and eventually dealing with the scientist herself. She had witnessed what her council did not include in the report, the broken bodies drained of blood, half-burnt Methuselah caged like crows, her scientist warped from the bright student she'd remembered and spoken with among other student Terrans and Methuselah, dreaming and brave and believing that the answer to their questions could be found with science as she once had and maybe still did. That the answer to what they were could be explained by atoms and molecules and nanomachines, that their future lay in their differences instead of division.

She had brought his death with her own hands.

"I count on you always to be my eyes where I cannot see." With those perfunctory and polite words that none in the room believed, she dismissed them and they withdrew, eyes lowered from the veil and guarding their thoughts, until only Mirka was left. Her task had been the hardest though Seth expected her report to be the shortest. A simple confirmation was all that she needed to give.

He had died without the dignity he'd held all his life, the pain of the silver nitrate in his veins making an animal out of him, clawing at her as she held him through his rattling into death. The other men had been sent away; she kept these last moments for herself as much as she could, the final grace offered by a mother destined to outlive her children. Your final wish, she'd asked him, her tone her promise to see it through. To see, she'd finally been able to make out through the choked sounds as his heart beat his death, to see the Empress unveiled. They all did in the end except for those who simply died. He'd wanted to see for himself if the future was reflected in her eyes.

"It is as you thought. He was their client."

He had died never knowing that she'd granted his wish nor that his empress looked down into his face in the still nakedness of death and saw that his eyes held her failure and the loss was like the withering of her wings.

"The plan was conceived by the Rosencreuz Orden."

It rang through her like sound, like fury.