• Character pic by Miguel Regadon Harkness

Most people know Ailson Kindler as the novelist who writes of supernatural seductions and thrills. They delight in her stories, and she makes a decent living to sustain a simple home in Ardis, a little further away from the city’s increasingly dangerous streets. She does keep several good guards on hand and her home is defended by a couple of crafty alchemical traps – fueled by the successes of her early writing days people suppose, or perhaps one of her many suitors from long ago. Some of those suitors still haven’t given up home, occasionally visiting her – or so the local rumors say.

She’s also known as something of a philanthropist, but she doesn’t have the means to support large projects.

Few know that Ailson Kindler was once a legendary vampire hunter, and in fact was one of the very hunters who hunted the ancient nosferatu, Count Galdyce, in the valley of the Red Breadth in the year 4685. They succeeded in killing an almost unknowable evil, but they lost much in the process. Her lover Duristan Barlhein went missing in the endeavor, and soon after Ailson quit hunting vampires. In their time, they were so legendary they inspired a little known and even less remembered school of monster hunters known as the School of the Red Breadth. But that was almost a quarter of a century ago. Now Ailson wants nothing to do with hunting, and she quickly sends prospective hunters away. Something broke within Ailson, and only those closest to her see it, even if they don’t know what it was. On some nights Vali Petrescu heard the stately woman full of life cry, as if some fresh wound were opened.