Esme Lamonia

### Relations

Rowena Muninn (daughter), Charity Brannigan (adopted mother), Caroline Lamonia (twin sister)

### Datable?

Yes

**Esme Lamonia,** known to many as the **Demon of Strawberry Street,** is a demon and ex-High Priestess of Damon, and the mother of Rowena Muninn.

## History

### Human Life

Esme was born in January 1776 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She and her twin sister, Caroline, became the youngest of four children. As part of a lower merchant family, Esme had a fairly comfortable life. However, by the time she and her sister were ten, it became clear that Caroline was terribly sickly. As the years went on, Caroline caught every illness that struck the town and seemed to get progressively weaker. Still, she hung on, surviving.

When the twins were seventeen, Esme met a strange older woman at a social gathering. She was immediately fascinated, and soon befriended this woman, Charity. Charity claimed that she could heal Caroline... for a price. Initially, Esme was reluctant, but after witnessing Charity make a deal, she began to believe in this mysterious promise. When Esme and Caroline were eighteen, Caroline caught deathly ill. Esme turned to Charity to heal her and learned the price... Esme's soul. Though reluctant, Esme agreed. Caroline was healed completely into a healthy young woman; Esme, in the view of her family and friends, disappeared off the face of the earth.

### Demon Life

Though newly a demon, Esme had an easy transition. She learned of Charity's ulterior motives in buying her soul... normally, healing wouldn't cost so much, but Charity had taken a particular liking to Esme and desired to adopt her as a daughter of sorts. The two fled the city before authorities could get involved in Esme's disappearance, relocating to Virginia. Charity helped Esme arrange her first deals and learn the ways of the inhuman underground. The two of them staked their territory and held it against other families, though as only two people, knew they couldn't last against stronger families for now. When the opportunity to go west presented itself, they took it, staying in inns and saloons of small settlements, then moving on when the deals ran dry. As time marched on, the two of them adapted to the times as they came, and eventually found themselves in New York City during the progressive era.

Although neither Esme nor Charity were particularly ambitious demons (both looked firmly humanoid, though Esme more so than Charity), the sway of the promise of the city took its toll. Both began to take more risks, though Charity especially was drawn into this new opulence. As Charity's hoard grew past the point of modesty, monstrous traits began to manifest, and the pair quickly found themselves on the radar of the Hoshikaze hunter clan. After five years in New York, Charity and Esme fled towards Esme's hometown of Philadelphia and found themselves running right into a trap... predicting that the two would flee, the Hoshikazes warned the Muninn population in the area.

The ambush that followed took Charity's life and left Esme injured. It was only Esme's fairly human looks that saved her... obviously a lower level demon. she was instead brought to the head of the Muninn family and offered a deal. The Muninn clan ran with demonic blood to make them stronger, smarter, faster, and able to live longer. If Esme agreed to bear three children and give them entirely to the clan, she would be spared and even placed on a no-hunt list. She agreed.

In the next 50 years, Esme was called upon to carry and bear children. After they were born, she was forbidden from seeing or contacting them, as per the agreement she made... the children "belonged entirely to the clan for as long as the clan survived." It was horrible on her, and she tried to watch them from afar. With no way to contact them, she found herself watching over them less and less, only checking in once or twice a year. Despite her attempts to distance herself, when the eldest, Oleanna, died in a hunt, she was distraught and swore to find a way around her deal. Though her debt was paid by 1956, when she was approached in 1964 and asked to make a deal for another child, she agreed on one condition: she desired all of the clans secrets. Desperate and not thinking Esme a threat, those terms were agreed to, and nine months later, Rowena Muninn was born and whisked away, just like all of the other children.

### Downfall

Though the clan secrets of the Muninns offered no way out of the deal that Esme had struck, she continued to watch over the children from afar as the family began to die. Before long, Rowena was the only child of Esme's left, and in order to protect her identity, Esme opted not to watch her daughter often. It was for that reason that

## Personality

Esme is a person of contrasts. Naturally warm and maternal, her past has made her have a cold, bitter, and guarded side that comes out around people she doesn't know well. Like most demons, she is neutral, ranging from true neutral to chaotic neutral, and her priorities morally lie in protecting herself and her hoard, of which she considers her daughter Rowena a part. Esme easily considers people friends once they prove themselves benevolent, or enemies when they get on her bad side. Despite living for almost two and a half centuries, she has a naive streak and tends to see the world in black and white at times.