Danika "Dani" Astor

Danika "Dani" Astor"Skill to do comes of doing; knowledge comes by eyes always open, and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power."- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pronouns	She/Her
Clan	Ventrue
Sect	Camarilla
Sect Faction	Ivory Masks
Social Class	Neonate
Morality	Humanity
Lineage	House of the Griffon
Social club	The Garden

Further Information

Description

A tall and sinewy transgender woman with a quiet intensity and practiced ease who appears to be approaching her 40’s, Danika “Dani” Astor is a neonate of Clan Ventrue and The House of the Griffon and the childe of Prince Christian Whitechapel of Boston, former Seneschal of London, New York, and Boston. Like her sire, Danika is openly queer, and does not hide the fact that she is transgender. She tends to dress in vintage or eclectic business attire with colorful accents. When conducting business outside of Elysium, Danika generally carries her well loved and well used silver-handled black sword-cane, which few have seen her drawn steel from and most mortals believe is simply the affectation of an aging queen who needs a walking stick. Danika carries herself with a practiced ease and air of relaxed confidence that can give way to quiet intensity, passionate inspiration, or cut-throat shrewdness and violent efficiency when experiencing the joy of discovery or the fear of dishonor or destruction for herself or those she chooses to serve or watch over.

Timeline

• 1946: Born in Yonkers, New York to middle class Irish-American parents: Danny and Katherine Kelly. She was known then as “Danny Jr” after her father. Her father claims that their lineage stretches back to the O’Kelly kings of the Irish petty kingdom of Brega, but Dani privately doubts these claims.

• 1961: At age 15, Dani visits her “spinster” aunt on her mother’s side in Greenwich Village during the summer, working at a cafe by day and attending beatnik poetry readings and sneaking into dive bars at night. Her aunt all but encourages Dani’s evening adventures and first experiments with more “flamboyant” fashion, particularly after seeing the way Dani could handle herself when accosted for that fashion. Dani returns home to Yonkers for her sophomore year of highschool, scheming a way to return to the Village permanently.

• 1961-1975: Vietnam War

• 1964: Dani’s scheme succeeds and she attends NYU on a scholarship, but drops out after one semester and begins working as a barback and unofficial security at several semi-clandestine gay bars, making a name for herself as a femme young man who can nevertheless still handle herself in a fight and is willing to protect her community out of genuine care, but fights even harder when motivated by profit. She begins going by “Dani Astor,” abandoning her family name so that her parents can’t find her. She is still somewhat shocked when they don’t even try. She takes her namesake both from one of the places where she found her true self and one of New York's most prominent families, an act that is both a challenge to the establishment and a sign of her ambitions to one day be part of it. Adopting the air of a streetwise dandy, Dani takes to carrying a walking stick when leaving for her shifts and grows proficient at defending herself and her community with it (and breaking the occasional leg for the mob.)

• June, 1969: The Stonewall Riots. Dani, now on the payroll as security at several mafia owned gay venues, is working the door at a club where Maypop Sickle (then performing as Violet) is performing. Before the Riots begin, Maypop notices from the stage the rapt awe, wonder, and admiration of the feminine young bouncer watching her from the crowd. Privately, Dani admits to herself that she wishes she could be as beautiful and wondrous a creature as "Violet", but comforts herself by privately swearing that she will at least protect such beauty if she can't have it. She is given a chance to put that oath into action when the Riots begin, and while the club's other bouncers desperately flush drugs and contraband and try to bar the door, Dani is seen by a fleeing "Violet" fighting back cops at the door and ushering fleeing queens inside. Following the Riots, Dani attends a handful of other marches and early meetings of the Gay Liberation Front, but is kept at a distance by both many of the more “respectable” activists and many of the “street queens” excluded from the mafia-owned gay bars where Dani worked. Despite this, she cultivates relationships with open-minded, practical and useful low level mafiosos and members Gay Liberation Front, and privately she resolves to find an employer whose motives for creating gay community were making a buck but providing actual safety and community instead of exploitation, blackmail, and danger by organized crime.

• December, 1969: Vietnam War draft begins.

• 1970: Dani finds the employer she is looking for in Christian Whitechapel when a recommendation from Maypop Sickle leads to a position as head bouncer at one of Christian’s gay clubs in Lower Manhattan. Choosing to fight for someone who accepts her, she publicly burns her draft card after refusing to hide her queerness during her draft board meeting and being deemed ineligible to serve due to her “homosexuality."

• 1971: Following one year of excellent performance, displaying her aptitude as both a negotiator and a fighter when necessary, Christian reveals what he is to Dani and offers to make her his ghoul, with the eventual possibility of the Embrace after a decade of stellar service and rigorous education. Dani feels that this is her moment to seize her fate, and inspired by the stories she heard of Christine Jorgensen growing up in the 1950’s, the handful of drag queens, trans women, and other gender-nonconforming people she encountered over the years in the Village (especially seeing Maypop Sickle perform before the Stonewall Riots), and her employer’s honesty in “coming out” to her as a vampire, she reveals to Christian that she is transgender, and offers to serve him loyally and with distinction if he will finance her transition in addition to granting her this chance at immortality. He accepts and she begins her service as Christian’s ghoul.

• 1971-1980: Danika takes over running the daytime side of Christian's businesses. Her education is rigorous and thorough, but she proves herself more than competent in his service. She also begins physically transitioning and using the name Danika and she/her pronouns more often, doing so consistently by 1980. During the beginning of her service to Christian, she also becomes friends with the then still-mortal Dr. Marcel Trevisani, keeping a protective eye on him during his more wanton club nights while he supported her during the day by helping her access hormones and transition care "on the low" with Christian's financial support. By the late 70's the two drifted apart as Marcel was increasingly consumed by his research into HIV and Dani devoted herself to managing her domitor's assets and business empire in anticipation of her pending Embrace. By this point, referring to her as “Danny” instead of Danika or Dani is a quick way to meet the business end of her walking stick.

• December 1980: Marcel contacts Dani and tries to resume their friendship after a few years of their contacts being solely focused on business. Dani says she is interested in meeting socially again, but soon declines Marcel's invitations and eventually entirely cuts off non-business related contact (and even that only through intermediaries.) Unknown to Marcel, this sudden severing of contact was due to her Embrace. This betrayal by a friend who he had supported and been supported by further hardens Marcel and contributes to his becoming a firebrand activist in the coming years.

• 1981: After a decade of loyal service, Christian seeks permission from the Mad Prince to Embrace Danika and does so.

• 1981-1987: Dani works directly under Christian in New York, learning essential knowledge of Clan, sect, and lineage for an ambitious young Ventrue and getting lessons of a different sort during her occasional night of fun out on the town with Maypop.

• 1987-2010: Danika is sent by her sire to study under members of the House of the Griffon while furthering Christian's interests and continuing to develop her skills. Wanting to prove herself worthy of the embrace and deeply curious about the world of monsters and magic she now operated within, she throws herself into her study and duties for her sire and his allies. While acting as a consulting diplomat, messenger, courtier, and negotiator for her House, Clan, and sire, she also busies herself poring over archives and speaking with the kindred she served about their experiences negotiating or warring against supernatural beings. Other than minor encounters with spirits and the walking dead controlled by some of her sire's more "eclectic" allies she studied under, she does not actually manage to put any of her accumulated knowledge to the test before she is forced to rapidly and clandestinely return to New York.

• 2010-2012: Warned about FIRSTLIGHT by Christian, Danika returns to New York to lay low and spends the time studying Project Twilight and surreptitiously reconnecting with some of her underworld contacts. Inspired by Maypop's encouragement that she would "have all of this in time if she returned to New York," Dani begins paving the way for her eventual return in a decade, reconnecting with trustworthy old contacts, greasing the right palms, and Dominating the occasional minor official or smalltime criminal in order to establish a foothold.

• 2012: The Second Inquisition begins. Danika shifts the topic of her studies and work solely on the reconnaissance and containment of the multi-headed hydra that is the Inquisition, but continues to travel between cities on her sire’s behalf in search of new intel on the Hunter threat.

• 2015: Increasingly stymied by her inability to use the internet or advanced data analytics to continue learning about the Inquisition in fear of breaking the Camarilla’s rules around technology, Dani offers a young, queer “grey hat” hacker, corporate spy for hire, and unlicensed PI, Nadia (She/They), the opportunity to become her ghoul after using the mortal as a consultant on several jobs against minor SI front organizations and off the record bank accounts. Danika tells the young woman that she reminds her of herself at a young age, and Nadia accepts and becomes Danika’s personal assistant, bodyguard, aide, and sole companion in her travels, enrolling in firearms training courses so as to better protect her domitor and proving an apt user of Dominate for a mortal after studying with both Danika and Christian.

• 2015-2021: Dani and Nadia continue traveling between domains, with Dani promoting herself to Kindred allied with her sire. as a “risk management consultant” and security professional against exterior threats (particularly the Inquisition)

• Spring 2022: Danika receives permission from her sire to permanently return to NYC and work on behalf of his interests, but also to build her own base of power with which to serve her Clan and Lineage and protect the Camarilla and Masquerade. Wth the assistance of her sire, she purchases a townhome between her namesake landmark and Tompkins Square Park and sends Nadia with her security detail to prepare her haven and begin reconnecting with her old contacts, establish useful new ones, and scout the neighborhood. Danika also reconnects with Maypop to announce her return and request the proper introductions to the Court.

• July, 2022: Danika returns to New York, eager to put her knowledge and influence to use.

"If knowledge is power, clandestine knowledge is power squared; it can be withheld, exchanged, and leveraged."
- Letty Cottin Pogrebin, founding editor of Ms. Magazine

Bio

Danika “Dani” Astor is a neonate of Clan Ventrue and The House of the Griffon and the childe of Prince Christian Whitechapel of Boston, former Seneschal of London, New York, and Boston.

She has acted as a traveling consultant and student to allies of her sire for the past forty years, occasionally returning to New York or Boston to report-in to her sire but generally staying in the domains she visited for only a few months or years at a time. Since being given permission by her sire to permanently settle in New York, she has rapidly built a small but dense influence web amidst the Elite and Underworld of the Lower East Side, particularly amidst minor organized crime and corruptible vice enforcement authorities as well as LGBT hackers, bouncers, and nightlife figures utilizing a mixture of new connections and old contacts she amassed in her travels and occasional stops back in the city of her youth and Embrace, as well as her ghoul Nadia’s mortal contacts. To the mortals she holds influence over amongst The Elite (Including NYPD community affairs detectives, NYU academics, and LES nightclub owners and elite escorts amongst others), Dani is an eccentric and wealthy retired nightlife manager, local investor, rumored former fixer, and collector of rare books who works through intermediaries (usually her "personal assistant," Nadia) and is not seen in public. To her mortal underworld connections amongst the hustlers, bouncers, bartenders, street punks, and even trans hacktivists of the LES, she is a strange, wealthy, and reclusive but fair queer patron somewhere in early middle-age with a murky past, capable of providing protection or putting a finger on the scales of power for those she favors for their discretion and ability to provide information. Her herd are drawn from the most interesting and trustworthy of these mortals, particularly those who are especially ambitious or seek to protect the queer community, and she provides clandestine financial support and protection to this select group in exchange for the service they provide her and their absolute discretion.

In Kindred politics, Danika does not generally demand the spotlight and instead works behind the scenes (or behind the throne) to gain knowledge, power, and respect for her competence in building and operating a brighter and more sustainable spotlight for her clients, mentors, patrons, and sire. However, despite this reputation for understatedness, she is ambitious and driven and wishes to step out of her sire’s shadow in this domain while still advancing his interests and the interests of her Clan and lineage. Despite her laconic air, she is brutally efficient and incredibly stubborn in a fight, calling upon years of experience as a bouncer and occasional freelance legbreaker honed by the eclectic training of her sire's contacts.

While quiet and deliberate, Danika is not withdrawn, and is attentive for and outgoing to any new opportunity to gain practical knowledge, useful connections, or leverage that can be exploited, and is not afraid to get her hands dirty as long as they appear clean after. Like her sire, Danika seeks to surround herself with influential Kindred of various social classes and Sects, particularly other driven neonates with whom she might form a mutually beneficial coterie like her sire’s Green Carnation Club.

Rumors

-Danika has a fleshcrafted tattoo of the three heads of the Abyssal Dragon she slew on the left side of her body, with one head terminating at her collar bone, one at her hip, and one at the top of her wrist.
-Danika witnessed the death of the Demon calling itself "Lilith."
-Danika stole back the portrait she gave Dr. Reynaldo for Christmas on what ended up being the day she executed her. Some say she destroyed it, others say she uses it for target practice, and some whisper that she has some kind of shrine to her lost, infernalist love.
-Danika publicly gave Nadiya Ibrahim a lap dance that was as passionate as it was amateurish during a game of Truth or Dare at a Garden Party.
-Danika and Nadiya Ibrahim dated for less than a year before deciding to wed.
-Danika used a glowing, holy spear (allegedly the Spear of Longinus) to deliver the death blow to to Sturbridge's colossal "perfect child" that she fought against alongside Elder Alaric of Gaul and Servire Mary Petersen and an Anarch Ishtarri
-In addition to the True Brujah and the Ishtarri, Danika and the others were also aided in battle by three Baali Elders. And one of them, Roth The Defiler, is the one who gave Danika the spear in combat. Others say she traded insults with Roth throughout the night even while wielding the spear and that they saw her throw the weapon at Roth's feet later in the night and refuse to keep it despite his claims that it wasn't tainted.
-After several inexplicable experiences connecting Danika more deeply to her humanity by engaging in religious rituals, as well as her connections and time spend with several religious Kindred, Danika is beginning to find some form of "religion," or at least believe that a "positive" or benign spiritual force exists in the universe that is hostile to Demons but seemingly not categorically opposed to Kindred.
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Quotes

• "Primogen Astor is a welcome and timely addition to our city." - B̷̨̹̘̞̙͉͑̉͑̄ ̷͚̜̮͚̑͌̆͠ë̸͈̘̤͚̠́́̍̏̿̽ ̵̻̱̣̫̹͉͒̏̋́͗͂͘͜͠á̶̢̺͖̔͐̎̒͌̔̎̈́ ̸͍̣͍̺̮̜̈́̐̿̈͒͗̅͝ț̷̛̦͙̤̭̋̈́̍̓̒ ̸̨̡̟̖̰̹̭̭̈́͂̾̓͜ŗ̸̡̼̘͔͚̮̇̋͂͛͝ ̷̧̧̮̣̰̻̩̘͈̏͊̅̕͝i̵̧͎͕̩̳͊͘ͅ ̵̤͓̀̀̃͜͝x̸̻͔̪͕͔̮͆̍
• “Do you wish to know the very worst thing about Primogen Astor? She’s far too capable and clever by half. By consistently meeting and exceeding our expectations, she will raise the bar for all her clan. What a disappointment her peers will be in comparison.” — Claude
• "There is nobody I would rather have fighting by my side." - Dr. Almeda Reynaldo
• "😒🙄👉👌" - Lynda DiAmbrosio
• "In a word, vaulting. How else would you describe how quickly they overcame each obstacle in their path, rising to the heady position of Primogen of the Clan of Kings in the economic capital of the world? Then, not content with a capstone most other Kindred could never aspire to, they continue on to be appointed as a Servire of the Josian Archons? This is clearly a King to watch..." - Michael De Luca
• "I've never met a Ventrue like her before... the way she handled that demon hunt was truly impressive. I'd love to get to know her better." - Nadiya Ibrahim
• "One of the brightest of the line of Ventrue, as she shines from the Clan of Kings. Courageous, cunning and resourceful is only the tip of the blade of her character. I have watched her progress as a Josian and though I Shepherd her, she as well Shepherd me. She will say it is her honor to stand with me, in truth, it is has always been my honor as my Servire. A decision, I will always cherish." - Jahangir Al-Tanin
  

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OOC Information

Player	Charlie K.
Pronouns	She/Her
MES #	US2022060019
Domain	NY-004-D
Storyteller	Emily L.