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lunarcovehq · 8 months ago

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Rio Tavárez is a vampire that currently resides in Echo Acres and has been a Lunar Cove resident for 18 months.

ITS THE END OF THE WORLD

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cis Woman, She/Her

DATE OF BIRTH: December 20, 1995

OCCUPATION: Curator at Art in Motion and Forger

FACECLAIM: Priscilla Quintana

AS WE KNOW IT, AND I FEEL FINE

SPECIES: Vampire

CLAN POSITION: Member

AGE AT TRANSFORMATION: 27

WELCOME TO LUNAR COVE, RIO TAVÁREZ

Trigger Warnings: Physical and Emotional Abuse, Death, Parental Neglect

The Tavarez dynasty stood like a monolith, a looming shadow over Rio all her life. Spanning generations, her family had accumulated wealth and prestige in the human world, dominating any industry they entered. Their hands touched everything - resources in coal and oil, financial markets, business acquisition, technology development. An empire. What the world they dominated did not know was the magic that fueled their industry. Magic had been in the Tavarez family longer than the wealth had, and it fueled them. Generation after generation, magic was used to bolster their advancement. The family cared little for physical talents, there was always use for someone who could manipulate an element, but the mental magics were favoured, and exploited. White collar crime fueled their empire, fraud, bribery, insider trading, Ponzi schemes. Whatever would get their family ahead.

Their father, Luis, became patriarch of the family at a young age, far earlier than he should have after the untimely death of his father, but he was thriving, he continued to build the wealth and prestige that his family was built upon, but it was not enough, never enough. Luis wanted more, always, the world itself would not have been enough. So he forced the world to bend to him. Their family had always used their magic to be less than fair in their business dealings with human companies, but Luis increased this, causing their empire to thrive.

This was the world Rio and Santiago were born into, the highest of luxuries, a world that you could not buy your way into, only born. From the outside it was picture perfect, they were the beautiful children of seemingly doting parents that loved them above all. However, it was a gilded cage. They attended the best schools, lived in luxury homes, had everything a child could dream of - but in return they had to be perfect. Not perfect in the ordinary sense, they had to be above reproach in their father’s eyes, look the part, smile just right, be silent unless spoken to, and if they were allowed to speak, they had to say the perfect thing. If they were not the right kind of perfect they would risk their father’s wrath. They never knew what form it would take. They were not children to him, they were merely extensions of himself and the image he wanted to portray to the world.

Their mother was no better. She had no love for her children, they were merely her duty. The tradeoff for Luis funding her lifestyle was giving him children and cementing the Tavarez legacy for another generation. They would see her sparingly, whenever a photograph needed to be taken, or Luis had a business meeting with someone particularly family focused. They were a family in pictures only.

As soon as Rio and Santiago were each old enough, they were forced to participate, abusing their magic for their fathers benefit. Santiago, the elder and the heir, was first, pulled into Luis’s web, followed shortly by Rio. Santiago tried to protect his sister as much as he could, shield her from the shadier of their father’s activities, but it was no use, she had a natural talent that their father noticed. As they grew, Santiago grew more and more anxious about the effect their father was having on Rio, terrified that she would end up like him. He knew that he would always be the heir, the one to inherit it all, but could also see the hunger in their fathers eyes when he looked at Rio.

So he did what he had to, he squirreled away funds, employing all the tricks their father forced on him, to try and give Rio a ticket out of the cage.

She learnt about his plans the day he handed her a plane ticket and a bag of clothes. She was shuffled away in the middle of the night. Santiago prayed he could keep their father occupied, away from their father, away from whatever plans their father had for Rio.

She ended up in New York with nothing but the cash in her wallet and the clothes in her bag. So she did what she was raised to do, trained to do, she bent the world to her will. Like father, like daughter. She started by using her magic for a price, raising spirits or tracking people - using everything at her disposal to make something for herself. It was not long before she started fencing supernatural wares, then fencing forgeries of paintings. Then came the cheques and bank bonds, forged with a deft hand. Forgery was where she found herself, anything you needed, she could make and fake. It had been a party trick her father enjoyed, the fake masterpieces she painted, and a trick he had exploited with her uncanny ability to forge signatures. Now, it was her life, and she used it to carve herself a little bit of a life.

For a time life was somewhat good, she was building herself something of a family with the Selvi sisters, she had someone she might be able to love, it was starting to work.

Then the man fell through her wall like it was water, clutching at his side as blood poured from a wound. He was oddly familiar, she had seen him in passing growing up, someone that had always been around, but never directly in contact with her and Santiago despite their similar ages. Now that she could get a good look at him the resemblance was uncanny. The slope of his brow, the sharp jawline. He looked like Santiago, he looked like her. He didn’t need to tell her that he was her brother, or her half brother, she could see it the moment she saw him. He looked uncannily like her brother, it was almost eerie, but his eyes matched hers perfectly.

She tried desperately to stop the bleeding, all while she questioned her brother, Javier. Trying to figure out what had happened to him, why he was bleeding out in her living room. He told her about their father, about the work he had to do for him, and about Santiago. He said that their brother was gone, that their father’s work had taken its toll on him.

She believed him, of course she did, here he was, her brother, dying in her arms.

And then he too was gone, limp and lifeless.

Grief overtook her like a tidal wave, the loss of both brothers, the one she loved and the one she never had the chance to. The wave swept her up, crashing over her. She didn’t turn her mind towards all of the other people she loved that could be swept up in her magic, the other people that could die, she could only see Javier. It was not a conscious choice, it was the only choice, her magic flooded from her and she raised Javier from the dead and the green eyes of her half brother opened, green eyes that matched hers.

Javier left that night, claiming he was trying to protect her, that he would need to return to Mexico, back to their father. He said everything right, said all the things Santiago would say in that situation. He didn’t want to draw his attention to her, he didn’t want her to know where she was, and now that she had done dark magic, he didn’t want him to have that leverage over her. She genuinely believed it, every word he said.

Despite what Javier had said, she traveled back to Mexico City, to the place she had sworn she would never return, to bid her farewells to Santiago, devastated that she hadn’t been able to when he had died. To her horror she discovered that Santiago had been alive when Javier appeared in her apartment and that he was now dead, having died the same night she had brought Javier back. She went to Javier, hoping to get him away from their father as Santiago had done for her, only for the other shoe to drop.

Javier had been raised on stories of his sister, the ruthless image their father had of her. Javier had pictured her just like he was, a weapon of their fathers ambition, a kindred spirit. Javier wanted her back in the fold, he wanted the weapon of their fathers stories. He claimed he wanted a sister, he wanted the two of them to be their own little family, just as her and Santiago had been.

Their father was none the wiser, he knew that Javier was in New York, he had always known where Rio was and had mentioned this to Javier, but he didn't know that Javier had intended to go to her. Javier explained to her that his original plan was to approach her, figuring he could talk her into coming back with him, but then he saw her. He had seen her with the Selvi sisters, and the small life she had managed to build for herself. He knew it wouldn’t be enough, so he decided to force her hand.

He had orchestrated it all, figuring that if she did dark magic she would be easy to blackmail. He could force her to come home with him, and he hoped that one day she would want to stay on her own. Getting rid of Santiago was a happy coincidence, a burden that Javier wouldn’t have to deal with thanks to Rio. When Luis had found out about Santiago’s death he had apparently just shrugged, not particularly caring as he still had Jaiver and Rio, or so Javier claimed.

Ever her father’s daughter, ever the blade he had welded her into, she made a decision that night.

It was not a difficult decision to turn into a vampire, she loved her magic, but she hated Javier and their father more. The rage was blinding, more blinding than her grief had been. She would die, and Javier tethered to her, would die with her, never to return. Their father’s disinterest in Santiago’s death would be punished.

Afterall, she was the child of Luis Tavarez, the ends justified the means.

With no one left in the world, bar a few friends in a secret town of supernatural’s, it seemed as though there was nowhere else she could go but Lunar Cove, the one place her father would never set foot in.

#priscilla quintana #Rio Tavárez #taken vampire #echo acres #all #art in motion

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