Character: Eva

Early Background

Growing up in Fremont, a non-Ethereal suburb on the outskirt hills of Santa Rina, Eva Rosenbaum could have been spared the complications of Centaurina, the Ethereal Santa Rina. There, she would have experienced the human sort of racism, as opposed to the Ethereal sort. Her parents were staunch believers in racial purity, and had been the founders of “The Antebellum School.” Though it managed to cover its nature to outsiders, it was essentially a revival segregation school—only the pureblood descendents of plantation owners in the Antebellum South are eligible to attend. The difficulty of tracing genealogy accurately deprecated the eligibility criterion into that of skin color. It was a Caucasian-only school. Interestingly, however, perhaps from the school’s recruiting so many teachers of the Old South, those from the area speak with a distinct Southern accent.

Other than retaining the accent of her suburb, Eva does not appear to hold the same stance on racial purity. This may be, in part, due to her induction into Centaurina at the tender age of four—by the vampire of legends Astrian. Though she would remain human for over a decade, she would ultimately be turned—the inevitable fate of the vampire’s human pet.

It is rumored that Astrian had been drawn to her by her hands—like Astrian, she had abnormally long and spindly fingers. In Eva’s youth, Astrian was known to all who knew her as the eccentric, but demanding piano teacher. In fact, it was Eva’s parents who had established the first formal connection between them—they hired him to be her piano teacher. (Though, perhaps, this might have been the result of a bit of telepathic coercion from Astrian’s part.)

Eva was Astrian’s only pupil, and, in a way, his only daughter. Though Astrian, who had been a newcomer to Santa Rina at the time, had to establish his domain and make peace with the various Ethereal factions, he had always been a good piano teacher. In her diaries, the seven-year old Eva described him as, “maybe a magician, you always get this feeling of wonder from him, and when I know I can’t play the piece, I tell him, and he plays it in my head, and then I can play it.” (His success as a piano teacher appears to have been, in part, due to the telepathic powers endowed him in vampirehood.)

The piano was both Eva’s passage away from the petty racial quibbles of her home suburb and the normality of the non-Ethereals. Her parents approved of it as something proper every young lady ought to learn, and they gave her great leniency on account of her piano playing—they allowed her the excuse of having to practice whenever their conversation ranged into talks of racial purity and discrimination. Indeed, her parents were proud of her virtuosity at such a young age, and often boasted of her uncontested victories in local competitions.

One reason why she had effortlessly won every single local competition might be because her competitors there were merely human—and, though, she, too, was merely human at the time, she had a vampire piano teacher. Her parents allowed (and, in fact, demanded) her to play in her first national competition when she was sixteen.

The entire event is in the golum video archives, as that year, the competition was held in Santa Rina. Though it is always the case with notable competitions to have a number of Ethereals offset the curve, this year, there was a profusion of Ethereals.

For the qualifying round, Eva had done rather poorly, when compared to her performance in her previous competitions. In fact, she had blanked out for nearly five minutes in the middle of her piece. However, her overall execution of Liszt’s Etude #4 was, to quote one judge, “flawless were the break considered an interpretive long rest.” She barely passed the round to advance into the finals.

Her performance in the finals was not only flawless, but, to quote the head judge, “dealt with the sort of emotional expression one would think impossible in a Liszt piece—without sacrifice to the inhuman precision of the music.” The difference is evidently attributed to her being turned, the night before. On even grounds with the other finalists—all Ethereals—she managed to keep her chain of victories unbroken. It was at this event that she was “discovered” by Santa Rina Studios, and thus began her sojourn from her hometown, as she toured the world as a concert pianist.

Eva Rosenbaum is better known as Eva Rose, the sensational teenage piano virtuoso. While both her publicity and public appearances have died down in her sudden reclusion from society, she’s still ever present and ever alive—no longer mortal, but immortal.

Recent Events

Eva Rose’s brief stint as a music celebrity ended three years after its start. Returning home to the Santa Rina bay area, she became something of a recluse. Though golum scholars have many theories on her withdrawal from public life, the events of the brutal slaughter of her family and the mysterious disappearance of the vampire Astrian may have instigated her reclusion.

Virtually no record exists of her presence in Santa Rina for almost a year after her return. Her employment as an intern at the Semper Morgue has only recently been verified. Though unable to enter the morgue due to the species-wards cast by the mages, living golum scholars have received confirmation from several sources regarding her role there.

Eva had been offered the job through the mayorial candidate Howard de Salle. One informant reports that the mage superintendent had been wary of her, at first, but eventually started “treating her as merely another human.” Despite the powers she inherited from Astrian’s blood, Eva has, apparently, yet to learn to use most of them. Subject to the mental manipulations of mages, and unable to tell the difference between a mage and a telepath, to the mages, she is as helpless as a human.

No one, other than Howard, knows where she lives. Though she’s lacking in many respects, she has, at least the physical grace of a powerful vampire—the capability of losing all stalkers on the trail to her lair.