This will be my first VTM character (beside the game)…feel free skip to the concept, I have a tendency to flush out a back story first (I do do other d20 games).
Dasha was born March 2nd 2018 in the city of Donetsk in the former Soviet Union. She was 21 years old when the Great Patriotic war began. The German 6th army moved at a frightening pace across the Ukraine and soon she was forced to evacuate.
It is a little known fact that there were 800,000 women who served in the Soviet Armed Forces during the war. Nearly 200,000 were decorated and 89 of them eventually received the Soviet Union’s highest award, the Hero of the Soviet Union, among which some served as pilots, snipers, machine gunners, AA gunners, tank crew members and partisans, as well as in auxiliary roles. Dasha would serve along side of two of them.
She was trained as a partisan (a spy) who served in brigade “Thirteen”, an all female reconnaissance unit that was operating behind enemy lines. In 1941 she was wounded, and briefly spent time in Russia before being redeployed to the 528th Rifle Regiment, where she was trained as a sniper and field medic. There she met fellow sniper Natalya Kovshova and her spotter Mariya Polivanova.
In August 1942, the unit was deployed on an offensive to Sutoki-Byakovo. Not long into the battle the commanding officer was killed, so Natalya took command of the unit. When the German troops began their counterattack, she gave the command to open fire on them. The Germans realized there were snipers in the area, so they launched a barrage of mortar fire.
When the fire stopped one soldier asked to retreat, Natalya replied with the famous phrase “Not one step back!” Casualties piled up on the Soviet side, leaving only three snipers alive, Dasha was too injured to continue fighting and the other two were Mariya and Natalya, who were injured too, but continued fighting. When they realized they were running low on ammunition and German forces were drawing closer and closer, Mariya and Natalya kissed before making their last stand, detonating the last of their grenades, killing themselves and surrounding German troops. Dasha, nearly completely covered in dirt, slipped into unconsciousness.
She awoke in a German hospital, somewhere behind enemy lines and was nursed back to health. She gazed out the window shortly before being transferred to her new prison. This would be her last time she would ever view the sun.
How long she had been there was unknown to her, but having been identified as a member of brigade 13, she spent all of it in torturous interrogation. Just when she thought she would completely break, she found a reprieve of sorts. She became disconnected from her prison, looking out at the scene through her own eyes, as if they were windows and she herself was safe from the madness.
When Dasha was about to give in, her “inner self”, stripped her of her memories of the last two years. Dasha screamed out in terror, “WHERE AM I !!!”. Inner self blocked even more of her memories until only an 8 year old girl remained, trapped in a strange body. Yanking desperately at her bonds, adrenaline pounded through her veins. Her right wrist began to break free, cuff and all. What happened next defies description…Dasha let out such blood-curdling cries that one of the Nazi officers ■■■■■■ himself.
“Forgive me Dasha”, inner voice whispered tearfully.
PAPA!!! PAPA!!!..WHERE AM I PAPA!!! HURRY PAPA HURRY!!! The officers retreated from the room completely beside themselves. What they heard could not be faked, and extended far, far beyond verbal communication. “WHERE ARE YOU PAPA!!!..WHERE ARE YOU!!!..COME QUICKLY…PLEASE!!!”. Across the Madness Network her cries echoed and her sire heard her for the first time. Rising quickly his eyes flew open wide. “Courage my child”, he whispered in urgency, “I am coming”.
The words reached her and, strangely, she was comforted just a bit. Then the shock took her and she fainted dead way, into a deep deep sleep.
She was herself again, but in a strange dream. She heard frantic shouts, as distant frenzied voices shouted back and forth, fighting against some peril…a fire perhaps?
Her eyes began to half open as she recognized the desperate cries of her former tormentors, much closer than the others. One staggered into the room, twisting this way and that, when a long blade exited from the front of his chest, as warm blood spat upon her face……a moment later he appeared!!
Sheathing his sword, her sire spoke softly, “don’t be afraid, trust me please”, he said with cold dead eyes, which oddly enough, where doing a very convincing job of expressing genuine compassion.
He cut his wrist, and gently said, “drink…this will ease your pain.”, Her head spinning, she gulped eagerly, not understanding why she trusted him so implicitly.
She sat on her bed peacefully, free from her bonds. Looked up at him, her eyes pleading for what she was sure she wanted.
“You don’t know what you ask for child…you will become dead like myself.”
“I died on the battlefield, but my body was denied the honor.”, she said ashamed.
“What is it that you want…….tell me.”
“I want to go home and fight alongside my comrades again, but this can never be… for I am a traitor now…I allowed myself to be captured.”, she returned unblinking.
“Let me die now so that I can fight as you do. Give me the strength to make amends.”
He looked upon her with both sadness and admiration. He touched her cheek gently…paused for a moment…then embraced her.
There are strange and terrifyingly eerie stories told beside roaring German campfire’s, even today.
Among the Ukranian’s, a very different tail is passed around. The story of a medic girl, returned from the dead, who would heal those fallen in battle with her otherworldly blood. A haunting visage who would suddenly appear from the darkness and liberate those captured in battle, fighting ferociously even as bullets would pass through her without effect. That is to say, if you believe in that kind of thing.
With no one to say otherwise, Dasha claims to be the childer of a well known Tremere that is counted among the un-cursed. She lives today with her secrets. Her inner self continues to protect her from suspicion, shielding her from select memories when the occasion calls for it. A fire-wall of sorts, she is granted “plausible deniability” and no one is the wiser for it.
Like all Malkavians, the voices can be quite a distraction at best and downright maddening at the worst. I should know, for I am she. I shield my outer self from the chaos when I need to and bear the burden of remembering everything at all times. On a good day, however, you can look deeply into her eyes and I will gaze back at you with a smile, for we are both one and the same beautiful person.
~Dasha Zorenkova
Footnotes:
Wile Dasha is pure fiction, Brigade 13 was not. For their bravery Mariya Polivanova and
Natalya Kovshova were posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for their very real last stand.
Concept:
Malkavian WW2 Soviet Spy/medic/sniper passing herself off as a Tremere Neonate (Her motivation is self preservation: “Never reveal your true nature to anyone”).
Dasha has no skill in Blood Sorcery, yet pretends to. To maintain the illusion of being Tremere she pretends to practice Portents:
Receive visions after waking that allegorically refer to future events of one’s life.
As she receives revelations through the “Madness Network”, she may pass relevant information off as having been obtained through “Blood Sorcery”.
Living in the past flaw:
Order 227: “Not a step back!!”.
When engaged in combat in a cause deeply important to her, usually involving either human friends or companions, Dasha will fight to the death rather than abandon her comrades and will NEVER allow herself to be captured!
Small Detail:
Her birthday makes her a pieces (the twin fish logo) and is a wink at her dual nature, which is not schizophrenia rather depersonalization-derealization disorder. Also the pieces reference Is the closest I will come to making a fishmalk.