"This is why the Impostress was written as either saintly or possessed."

[untiemyhands]

Player

Name: Matchre
Preferred Pronouns: She/her
Personal Journal: scorpiontails
Contact Info: matchre @ plurk, though I have trouble keeping up with it lately - PMs are great, and my skype's zazozaliad
Other Characters: None.

Character

Name: Klara (the Impostress)
Canon: Pathologic
Age: Three days old. Physically? People call her young, but there's a significant amount of children in the game at various ages that are obviously younger - so my best bet is 15, 16.
Type: Original Universe.
Canon point: The night of day three, during the midst of a nap.

History:  There is no real adequate source for Pathologic outside of itself, nothing like a wiki. Pardon that this might take a while.

In an unnamed town in an unnamed time and country (but one that most definitely FEELS like somewhere in early 1900s Russia) , there comes an outbreak of an awful disease. Attempts to cure this disease are in vain. Attempts to contain it are overwhelmed. It is as if this sickness possesses a willful malice that erodes not only at a man's health, but at his very morality. This outbreak sought to devour every semblance of humanity it could settle in the veins of.

Klara is one of three player characters, the most important pieces in the coming plot - three pawns that will become queens. They're all healers in their own right, here for their own reasons. Where cold Bachelor uses conventional medicine and bloody Haruspex uses folk remedies (and folks' organs), Klara simply has mysterious powers inherent to herself. She comes to the town (and to being entirely) by waking up in an open grave, and has no real memories to herself - simply impressions of her own nature and a name, and nothing more concrete.

She's immediately fostered by the Saburovs, one of three powerful families that rule the town. Where Alexander Saburov is a severe man desperate to uphold the responsibility of his position of governor, Katherine Saburov is distant and rather ethereal. She's picturesque of her position as Mistress of the Land, a clairvoyant spoken to by earth spirits.

From her first appearance in the town, Klara's reputation amongst its populace constantly suffers. When confronted about being spotted in places she doesn't remember being, she hastily claims she has a twin running amuck in her stead, which Klara is pretty sure is a lie at first but evidence rapidly mounts to the contrary.

The Saburovs are decent to her, but very eager to take advantage of Klara's strange powers. After a test that goes... a little wrong, they ascertain she's not lying about them and immediately set her onto what will become a routine: Alexander orders her to investigate people he believes to be the cause of the outbreak, while Katherine has her continually go about about clearing names and converting people to the Saburovs' preferred political philosophy, "Humility."

Klara has a personal stake in defending most of the people Alexander accuses - they are drawn from the list of her Adherents, a mismatched cadre of vital people whose importance was ordained by the deceased Simon Kain. Their destinies and purposes are unclear, but defending them is integral and failing to leads them, as the Executors will so delicately put it, dying in her stead, because they are the only ones who will die for her. The Saburovs themselves are her Adherents, a warning sign considering the others are all considered criminals to varying degree.

While Bachelor and Haruspex scramble about trying to find cures, Klara is mostly trying to find out her own nature. From the start, she's accused of being a thief, a supernatural creature created by the earth, an impostor, and most mundanely a liar. It turns out she is, indeed, all of these things. As she meets more and more of the strange beings of the town, they all regard her as a fellow oddity - the indigenous people from the Steppe chant incantations to 'turn her back to clay,' the prophet with the head of a rat welcomes her as the plague that he's making a home for, and various beings of earthly origin call her sister.

Klara both denies and embraces the identity, depending on whether it will be advantageous at the time. She appreciates her powers, but not the label of 'Plague' - she doesn't want to be death incarnate! She's a miracle worker, a saint! Conversely, the plague is everything that her twin is. It's implicated that they are even one and the same person, simply different identities - and the game does have a strange treatment of other twins, a certain blurring of self. At several points, though, they meet in person, and chasing the twin away from places where she tries to settle is integral later in the game to keeping areas in the town from staying infected. The mundane explanation is Klara is hallucinating the face-to-face encounters and has an alternate personality. The supernatural explanation is that Klara's lie made them into two different people.

Normally I try to play them as to an extent the same person, but to maintain the ambiguity and alibi-by-proxy-of-time-constraints - but because of the power blocks/Ellenium, the weird, reality-blurring nature of Klara's double person-hood will be forced into stability. She is the saint and the impostor has been left behind her, right...?

(No, Klara. You are the plagues.)

Klara's only had a small dose of the strange town she was born into - as she slept her third night in the Saburov household, dreaming portents, she ended up getting chosen by Veloxia to help get a whole other spooky town back in line.

Personality:

Klara is wily, cunning, and self-preserving. She will lie through her teeth when necessary, sometimes lie anyway when it's not, and wring the truth for every twist she can afford to put into it. Omitting information is one of her favorite tactics. She's boastful, too - playing on people's fears of her has been advantageous. Lines like, "I am Klara, a notch on the point of the spear of destiny!" or "You have no idea who you're talking to, serf, I'm the soul collector," are not out of character for her.

Her inhuman origin often shows in how she interacts, and she is particularly known for speaking in impudent riddles and veiled half-truths. Yet Klara can be empathic. Usually, though, she couldn't afford to be too kind, simply from the slew of factors set against her. Despite this, her Adherents are all criminals for a reason - Klara believes at her very core in the power of redemption. If she did not, then I think her outright defiance of her nature would simply not have happened at all. People have to have the power to change; because at least she's certainly not going to sit back and accept the verdict of what she is according to the Law.

Outwardly, her twin comes off as the kinder of the two - and the more emotionally open one, quick to ask for supplication and quick to warmly praise her few supporters. They're both tricksters, it's just the twin is the one that's accepting of herself and thus less guarded toward everyone else. For the majority of the game, the tales you hear about her exploits are of a girl who can win over the hearts of the lowly people, even as hell is constantly wrought on your collective reputations.

Klara is excitable and easy to order around, likely because of her habits of ingratiating herself to others for the sake of survival. The game's mechanics are focused around a) keeping your physical condition stabilized and b) running countless errands for random jerks, so it's pretty much an ingrained behavior. She doesn't lick boots, though, and she's one of the farthest things you can find from spineless.

In fact, Klara is very judgmental. She will launch accusations and form opinions practically from the first few lines she's spent talking to someone, which is pretty funny considering her own troubles with other people's opinions. Inwardly, she owes little loyalty to specific people - she will proclaim love and fealty as she is asked for it, but Klara considers herself something aloof and different from the people around her, and has been constantly reinforced of that notion. Despite all that, she's still been formed from the basic template of 'young human girl' - in between her holy attitude and strange mannerisms, she has her endearingly childish moments. She is as much an ill-prepared youth playing with something bigger than herself as her creators are.

(But those creators are a story for another day, because meta-text gives everyone headaches.)

Her twin is closer to their inhuman nature than her - again, it ties into acceptance. Klara, by her title of thief, is trying to steal a life for herself she wasn't entitled to. It's not confirmed who came first - Klara or the sister. Perhaps Klara is what humanity was within her sister that gave her pause in bringing about so many deaths, or perhaps Klara's first lie had enough power to separate herself from her purpose. Considering the game's regular painting of the fourth wall, it could even be a meta-reason; the plague was all that existed at first, but the will of the Player caused Klara's dissent.

Abilities: Let's be short: Klara is inhuman. Supernatural senses should tick her as "not human," even though she looks entirely like one. As she comes from the earth and her memories are formed from the memories that have seeped into it, to magical divining she comes off as earth-like in place of human-like. Mundane means says "human, but kinda strange," as the Bachelor ascertained from a quick blood test.  I can't imagine this being something that would be blocked, since it's not an active power so much as her being really damn creepy.

Her powers work like so. She can heal by laying her hands upon the ailing, but this works by changing their very blood into something stronger, and described as the game as 'bull-like.' It's been shown to work on normal wounds like bullets or cuts, but the change is permanent. This ability makes her a bit hurt herself to use - I'm gonna say it induces anemia, to follow on the blood theme. Klara is unfamiliar with the blood-changing aspect of this power.

Relating back to blood again, she can wave her hands at someone and cause them to start violently spraying blood like something out of a Quentin Tarantino movie. This isn't an instant kill, but IS an instant "holy shit" moment.

She has the ability to hypnotize someone for a brief time into answering questions with what they believe to be the truth, but it has a complex ritual surrounding it - first, she has to know a secret about the person, one that they would mind someone knowing. She calls these secrets "hooks." She also needs to know their real name - no nicknames work. The victim of the hypnosis usually doesn't recall the hypnosis itself, lucky to Klara. She also has a specific verbal patter that she uses in the lead-up.

Hypnotized characters answer questions simply, with feelings laid bare.

Finally, she can make a sudden flash of light happen around her, like a lightning strike. It doesn't actually DO anything other than look impressive.

With all of these things cut off, Klara will certainly be disturbed. Her powers have been largely a boon to her so far, though she's met with the first seeds hinting at her unsettling nature, she relies on them constantly and derives great confidence from their presence. Sucks to be you, Klara.

Sample:
Have one or two or three!