Name: Stacey Charlotte McCrae
Nickname(s): Stace
Parents: Jonathan & Carmella McCrae (Both Deceased)
Sibling(s): Nancy McCrae (Vampire, 248, Turned at 26), Donald McCrae (Vampire, 239, Turned at 15), Richard McCrae (Deceased)
Gender: Female
Date of Birth: Tuesday, 19 December 1762
Age: 246
Apparent Age: Late Teens to Early Twenties
Place of Birth: Altnaharra, Scotland
Language(s) Spoken: Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig), Scots, English
Language(s) Read/Written: Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig), English
Species: Vampire
Coven: Tarepha
Appearance: Stacey’s dishwater-blonde hair has taken on a white-blonde hue since her turning, though it appears to be more of a golden-blonde shortly after she has fed. It reaches almost to the middle of her back and is naturally curly, though she does add to its curliness regularly to make it more attractive. Her hair is almost always worn loose. Her brown eyes flank a petite nose and her round jaw leads into medium-high cheekbones. She has small dimples and what freckles she had as a mortal are gone now in her immortality.
Stacey’s body is slender, but athletic in nature. She has generous curves and is endowed with a bra size of 34D. Her pale skin warms to a more life-like tone shortly after feeding. Stacey’s is a bold, almost careless strut screaming confidence; at the same time, however, it’s rather careless and casual. She’s easy to please for the most part, but she’s just as easy to piss off. Her smile, on the other hand, is an excellent tool most often useful (and successful) in luring prey of the male variety – or just men in general.
Her attire has adapted over time to match the present era, though some things never seem to go out of style – like the
sapphire-and-diamond choker she is constantly seen wearing; it’s her favorite piece of jewelry by far. She is also most often seen wearing a pair of
14k white gold diamond-and-sapphire earrings. Other jewelry varies, though most of it bears sapphires in some fashion or another. Since the eighties, Stacey has taken on a ‘punk’ look in terms of her clothing. Her denim skirts come nowhere near the knees and they are often matched by a denim vest of some kind. Her vests are worn over t-shirts with a hard rock or metal theme to them. Short ladies’ boots are often on her feet to complete the look, though the heels aren’t stiletto.
History: Stacey was born into a family of farmers and ranchers, just like many other Scots. But when she was seven, the Highland Clearances sent her family far from their home and into hiding. Taking refuge in Kinbrace, they were able to hop a train to Kylesku. They then made it on foot to Lanford Bridge; they were nearly caught there, but they managed to escape with the help of a wagon driver who delivered them to a ship departing from Durness. Stacey, the second-oldest child in her family, remembers little of that journey due to her age at the time; however, she clearly remembers the experience of the sea voyage that took her to Bar Harbor, a settlement found in 1763 (six years before her flight from Scotland) in what is now Maine. From there, they made their way to a settlement called Ellsworth that consisted of six townships also created in 1763.
While technically unnecessary, her family’s departure from Scotland was a chance to escape the incurrence of poverty by those in control of the country. Many families were being relocated against their will to farms and homes outside the highlands and some of them (including Stacey’s own family) were leaving Scotland in the hopes of living a better life than what their leaders offered them. The trip to Bar Harbor was long and arduous despite being an almost completely straight line from Durness. There were a number of other families living on the ship that carried them to Bar Harbor and the ship was crowded as a result. Stacey had spent most of her time playing Patty Cake with her then-infant twin brothers, Donald and Richard. Her older sister, Nancy, spent most of the time taking care of her father. Jon had become ill due to the poor conditions of the trip; he died just two days before they reached Bar Harbor.
Bar Harbor folks were kind enough upon seeing a recently widowed woman with children coming ashore to help her get a piece of land in Ellsworth. Over the years, Stacey and her family grew to love their new home; Carmella still longed for Scotland, though she did adapt well to what would become the United States’ way of living. Yet her life came to an early end before she ever saw her daughters married off.
When she was twenty-two and still looked a little more innocent than she probably was, Stacey’s life was turned upside-down. Her mother was attacked one night and completely drained by a vampire; no one ever learned his name. Don, who’d always had a deep connection with his twin brother, tried to stop Richard before he ran out of the room to see what was going on; their connection had given them both a sixth sense in terms of one another’s welfare, making them precognitive and empathic, and Don knew that his brother was going to die if he left the room that night. Don failed to stop it. In return, though, the vampire turned the three remaining siblings. Screams from Stacey and her older sister, Nancy, upon seeing their mother dead and their brother tossed aside and killed like some kind of rag doll had drawn neighbors that busted in the door to help them; this prompted a quick escape by the stranger, though he had already turned the trio by that time.
Thinking them dead, all three were buried and mourned alongside the truly dead brother and mother. No bells were placed because it was clear that they were dead, but the grave keeper discovered upturned dirt where three new vampires (unbeknownst to the general population) were raised that evening. Seven people died in the first two nights after that.
Don has always felt responsible for his twin’s death, having not stopped him soon enough weighing heavily on his broad shoulders, but the deaths of Richard and Carmella were extremely taxing for everyone. Painful as it was, Nancy began manipulating a local doctor soon after the three had awoken and he helped them to reclaim their property; it hadn’t gone up for auction at that point, so it was rather easy. The doctor explained that the attacker had killed the mother and the youngest brother before using snake oil (gypsies’ concoctions) on the others; most likely, he said, the murderer had intended to finish them off in some ritual devilry. The story thus remained that he’d been interrupted and driven off by the helpful neighbors and three of the children thus lived.
The apparent eccentricities of the McCrae family thereafter – their choice to keep to themselves, their activity at night, and so on – were most often chalked up to the mental and emotional trauma they had suffered (first the death of their mother and youngest sibling, and then being buried alive). They didn’t dare contradict this; instead, they used it to their advantage. In private, they took to the countryside and fed from farmers and ranchers. They quickly discovered how fast and strong they were, how keen their senses were, and how easy it was to completely hypnotize someone by the powers of their eyes and voice. Most of all, they discovered they could wean themselves off of blood to the extent that they could restrain themselves from feeding for around for nights. This, of course, was eventually extended to around seven or eight days – but that took a good century.
The murders were hushed up by locals, but it was clear that something was happening; a number of local legends and myths sprung up as a result of the killings, none of them good. Though neither of the sisters liked it, Don had taken to stealing what he could from the vampires’ victims. They hunted together, but the sisters said nothing since they needed money to appear almost normal. They kept up their farming, but the animals had begun to grow restless and they thus sold them off along with a good portion of their land. They also kept themselves away from news of wars and such for a long time, though news still came. When drafts came up, Don was nowhere to be found. He still had a bit of his precognitive ability, though nowhere near as strong as it had been when his brother had been alive, and he always seemed to know when someone was coming to the door. The story was always that he was away on business.
When the twentieth century rolled around, things began to change quickly. Quickly rushing to be one of the first, though he most certainly wasn’t, Don bought a car and learned how to drive it. He taught both of his sisters and started driving them around all over the place at night just for the fun of it. His melancholy nature had grown into a perpetually dark mood and it was good to finally see something that even slightly cheered him. While they had never liked what they were doing – the murders, the feeding – the sisters had grown so used to it that it was simply a way of life. For Don, though, it had become a drug. By this time, though, Stacey in particular had taken on a bit of a complex regarding men other than Don. She had become much bolder than she had been as a mortal, much ‘tougher’ in the social sense, but she had also begun to rebel against male oppression. Nancy supported her wholeheartedly, though she had become more of a ‘party girl’ than anything else.
When the Tarepha came into Ellsworth, it was the best thing that could have happened to Don. He fit the Tarepha perfectly and quickly became a member. The Enashe had also come into the city, though they had been on their way to New York. There were only five Tarepha and four Enashe, but a fight nearly broke out between them; the Enashe were the first to break the tension by leaving, taking Nancy with them. It was an emotional parting, but Nancy (like Stacey) wanted a new life. Torn between her best friend (who also happened to be her sister) and her brother’s apparent need for a violent way to express his anger that he lived while his brother was dead, Stacey decided to join the Tarepha and stay in Ellsworth. It was several years later that the sisters stopped using mail and starting using telephones.
Finally, though, the Tarepha presence in Ellsworth had begun to rub off on Stacey. She had finally become a little like her brother – just enough to recognize that he didn’t really need her presence anymore. Frankly, the tension between the two was getting irritating and Stacey wanted to leave. Some of the Tarepha, who’d grown in numbers since their arrival, headed up to Canada; Stacey followed them. They ended up in a place called Demaitre.
For the next several decades, Stacey began paying to have iron secretly mined from local underground reserves. She did it mostly for something to do at first, though she did turn much of what she obtained into statues of various animals and people. She made quite a lot of money selling them, too. When the seventies and eighties came around, she discovered Michael Jackson and Journey. She also discovered abstract art with iron; she had seen a female sculptor making something out of iron that vaguely resembled a Picasso and her interest had been peaked. She also became infatuated (and still is) with the fashion of the eighties. In the nineties, she added Disturbed and Eluveitie to her musical repertoire. When computers began to show up everywhere, she knew nothing about them; as the new millennium hit, though, she found that more and more people were e-mailing instead of phoning. She thus got a computer and phoned her sister to get one, too; she already had one, though. They have e-mailed and phoned on a relatively equal basis ever since, though their computers have undergone a number of upgrades since 2001.
Most of her time now is spent making iron sculptures and listening to music, watching horror movies, playing survival-themed video games such as Resident Evil on her PC, hunting for a meal, or having a good time in local bars and clubs. The majority of her entertainment comes from the latter two activities, though she also spends a good deal of time with the first and second activities. She e-mails her sister constantly and phones her regularly, but she also has occasional contact with her brother (mostly through e-mail, though phone calls do occur on holidays and rare occasions). Every year since 1993, she’s gotten together with her sister for Christmas; every year since 2006, their brother has decided to join them. They meet in New York City and Demaitre alternately.
