Sonya

> Our people, our family, whatever. Life. Life gave you your soul. You just needed the genetics to shape it all. A body to hold your life, your experiences and memories, your emotions and feelings.
>
> Sonya, in Volume IV - "Despair"

## Sonya Van de Graff

### Abilities

Telekinesis, Volatility
 Talent (Faster Healing)

## Signature

Sonya Van de Graffe (originally spelled Sonja and later changed at her personal discretion) is one of the protagonists in the *Legacy of Sorrow* and the "guiding light" for the free Vampyres of Aerael. Although limited in her capabilities during the series' timeline due to her injuries and amnesia, her history played a vital role in the formation of Aerael and continued to keep the members of Kara's Counsel in check through her high ethical standards, moral compass, and continuing positivity. Sonya is one of the oldest living Vampyres, being the first other than the Creature to bear the Vampyric infection and witness its effects. In spite of her long life and the horrors she witnessed, she kept a jubilant and radiant personality both before and after her amnesic injury.

Sonya was always defined by her sense of goodwill, which superseded the inherent hatred and rage that she felt toward the Creature (Schillinger) and his Pyrates. This blossomed into her role as Kara's right hand, using her infectious optimism to maintain hope as she guided the city to prosperity alongside Val and Kara. Being more of a "people person," Sonya is found more often than not helping the disadvantaged or the struggling populations of the world with the hope of eliminating the inherent evils of the world through positive thoughts and actions. This makes Kara and Sonya's relation successful as they both have the desire to conquer the forces working to kill free Vampyres and humans, but work to resolve the conflict through their separate and distinct methods.

Sonya's path through the *Legacy of Sorrow* is a winding road of tragedy and hardship, but is counterbalanced by the immense support she garnered from the earned respect of her adoptive family. She is known most vividly for being trustworthy, forward-thinking, and creative; this doesn't negate the skill she has as a warrior. Learning alongside Kara (occasionally matching Kara's prowess as a huntress, telekinetic, martial artist, and marksman) and participating in countless battles, Sonya is a brute force to be reckoned with when her people or her friends are at stake.

## History

Sonya was born in the Swedish territory of *Verden,* a contested piece of land that was hotly contested by politics, changing border, and the handful of countries that neighbored the tiny, Swedish-controlled land. As a bastard child, Sonya was whisked away from her place of birth almost immediately, wherein her mother searched for safe passage to England. Unfortunately, the circumstances of Sonya's birth and the rising tide of war in the region left Sonya's mother with only one option: selling her daughter into English servitude. Her mother took this opportunity, leveraging her lineage to - at least - ensure that her daughter's servitude would be for that of a royal family or a noble household. A representative of the House of the Lord Renfold accepted her proposition, taking her three-month-old daughter away from her home and leaving her to the fate that awaited her in a new country.

While her mother escaped to a location never to be traced back through historical record, Sonya arrived at her new home and was treated well, although she was raised with the knowledge that she would be a servant for life. Accepting this fate at the young age of 8 and having made friends with the Residents of the House of Lord Renfold (Karalynn and Valterius), she was taught in secret to read, write, and even perform basic mathematics up to the levels of arithmetic that Valterius was being taught. With Karalynn as a close friend and Valterius as a pseudo-brother and mentor, Sonya was comfortable in her daily duties and chores. Unfortunately, her treatment was severe as the aged Lord of the House grew further and further into the stages of (what was likely) Alzheimers or Dementia. His caretakers and personal faith healers assured the three children that their Lord was merely experiencing a grapple with his own mortality, but as his behavior grew more erratic, the beatings, whippings, and abuse that Sonya received only grew.

Karalynn, having few duties to do on a daily basis as the "woman who would bear children to further the bloodline shared by Valterius" (in the words of Renfold), saw this abuse and became particularly aggravated at one punishment for Sonya's imperfection in cleaning Lord Renfold's favorite chair. At the age of 16, Sonya was forced to sleep outside in the rain, naked, and was only allowed in the house for her daily scraps of food and the occasional reward of a second-hand bath. This continued for nearly a month until Valterius, unknowing to the young girls at the time (Kara being 15 and Sonya being 16), laid a trap that would end with the Lord of the House of Renfold to fall down the stairs, injuring his neck, pelvis, and spine to yield a quick and seemingly-accidental death. Valterius had already prepared for the inevitable moment they would need to flee the house in order to avoid prosecution from the Catholic faith healers that would eventually discover the treachery, having stashed silver, gold, and other valuables for months with the intent of escaping the cruel care of his master.

This murder, never revealed to the girls as an intentional death, sparked the events that led to their fateful trip into the English countryside, encountering the Creature (who would later be known as Robert Schillinger). A near-mindless being at the time, the Creature attacked Sonya first, as her length of blonde hair highlighted at a distance the vulnerability she posed as a young woman. The Creature inflicted two bites on her shoulder, intended for her neck and abated by Sonya's drive to fight back, before he turned his attention to a defensive Karalynn. Kara, in an attempt to pull the Creature away from her best friend, was attacked in turn, suffering scratches that marred her face with jagged lines and left her face, breast, and right leg bleeding significantly. Valterius fought the Creature off by stabbing him in the back with a hunting knife, which forced the Creature to retreat and for Valterius to care for the girls as they made their way to the coast.

Once they reached the coast, Valterius worked to secure secrecy and a place to live with a local fisherman while Sonya and Kara faded in and out of lucidity, often sleeping 18 hours a day or more in feverish, come-like states with the occasional bout of pseudo-psychedelic visions and horrific waking visions. This ended in both of the girls' apparent deaths, as they slipped into a deeper coma that Valterius and his master failed to differentiate from death. Only minutes after becoming ashen in color and their breathing having stopped, Sonya and Kara awoke to see their injuries and infections begin to heal before their eyes; only minutes passed before they were both returned to a state of perfect health. Believing that God had intervened, Valterius was grateful while his master, the fisherman, was sure of witchcraft and attempted to leave the house in order to turn them over to the clergy. Valterius stopped him from leaving, typing him up and attempting to persuade him of their normalcy. This failed when Sonya, after a bout of severe abdominal pain, went into a frenzy and tore the man's neck open to drink heavily from his blood. Kara, without having killed the man, joined Sonya in a primal instinct that closely resembled a relentless and dire hunger. After Sonya's attack and their mental recovery, both of the girls became frightened at their new form, having felt "saber-toothed fangs and an incomprehensible loss of control" as described by Kara in a later journal entry.

Valterius snuck the women aboard a ship headed to the British Atlantic colonies under disguised names and roles, eventually reaching America and landing in Pennsylvania. Having left no evidence but feeding on crew members and dumping them overboard during the trip, they fled to avoid the inevitable persecution from murder and found their way to Salem. Upon reaching Salem, Kara and Sonya blended in as seamstresses, only feeding on "idiots, those hated by the townsfolk, and criminals of vile nature" as described in another journal entry by Kara. This quickly changed in 1692 when Sonya, now 22 years of age, denied a drunken man his sexual advances. As he became more aggressive, Sonya panicked and screamed when pinned against the wall of an alehouse. When she did so, the fireplace of the alehouse exploded in a bomb-like rush of fire and allowed her an escape. This led to the trio's flight across unknown territory and eventually into Philadelphia. Prior to reaching the city, they were again attacked by the Creature, this time warded off by Kara and Sonya's combined strength and willpower. After the attack, Valterius was converted to Vampyrism by Kara in an ethically-questionable manner.

Kara became something of Sonya's mentor, having discovered her own abilities in a separate incident and rapidly gaining control over the volatile explosions they could cause; she instead began to realize that in calmer states of mine, she could manipulate the displacement of objects without their destruction. As Valterius began a career in politics to both provide for the women and to ensure some form of authority to cover their tracks, Sonya and Kara began to realize their strength, powers, and capabilities, as well as the uses that they could have in defending both themselves and others in vulnerable positions. They maintained their secrecy until 1775, when the American Revolution began to take hold across the former Colonies.

Starting in 1777, Kara made the decision to use the American Revolution as an excuse to feed during battles and to pursue the Creature with Sonya's help. Sonya, accepted, but they had little success in locating the Creature. Other Vampyres (as they were now called by survivors of random attacks throughout the Colonies) became a threat, and Kara quickly realized that the Creature was building an army of his own Vampyres to protect and serve him in the same way that Kara and Sonya had converted Valterius. Sonya was the one to theorize that the Creature only realized his ability to create an army after attacking Valterius and realizing that he was a Vampyre that had been converted by someone other than himself.

During one of these encounters with the Creature, a pair of siblings by the name of Allison And Catherine (later known as Krystal) are saved from being fed upon. Sonya tracked the Creature for hundreds of miles while Kara tended to the sick girls they had saved, but he escaped into the Pennsylvania Appalachians and was lost. Upon returning to Kara, they made the decision to convert Allison and Catherine to let their own affliction eradicate their illness in the same way it had helped heal Kara and Sonya's wounds. The young girls developed unique abilities in the following years, and Krystal fell under Kara's wing of warrior mentorship while Alice was taught patience and diplomacy by Valterius. During this time, the group of five were subjected to repeated attacks by either the Creature or his minions, the bulk of which were single-handedly fought off by Sonya and Kara. After the American Revolution was won, Valterius had secured a place in politics while Sonya and Kara searched for a purpose higher than becoming merely huntresses.

In an effort to shun society and find peace in solitude, Kara and Sonya abandoned Valterius and made their way to uncharted territory west of Colonial America, incidentally carving the initial route for the Oregon Trail. Kara's rationale was to draw the Creature, who seemed to favor Kara during his intermittent attacks, away from Valterius to give him a peaceful life. Once they realized that society was developing in the New Salem they established, Kara began to feel the guilt of leaving her brother behind, recognizing that the Creature had not followed them and could have been pursuing Valterius, instead. After returning to Philadelphia, Valterius accepted the girls back with open arms and they began to infiltrate the early government of the United States through Val's political connections.

Sonya's sole responsibility became the tempering of Kara's mentality, as she became more hateful, spiteful, and aggressive in her endeavors to find and destroy the Creature. Sonya's efforts were successful, and the pair began transporting (smuggling) escaped slaves, innocents accused of crime, and others, into the basement of Valterius' home. The basement of this home would become the city of Aerael in the mid-19th century while building a civilization of Vampyres to rival the growing enemy faction. While Sonya's intent was to care for the disenfranchised, Kara's aim was to grow an army to eventually march against the Creature and what was now known as the Pyrates. The next century consisted of Kara exploiting various wars and conflicts to seek the Creature and his minions in order to eradicate them, largely to no avail, while Sonya aided her in combat and Valterius maintained the backbone of the growing city of Aerael. the Creature wasn't sighted for more than a hundred years, leading to a loss of hope, but the effects of his growing army motivated the group to continue seeking him out.

In 1943, Kara manufactured a plan to obtain more information on the Creature by exploiting his Nazi allies. The mission was not only successful in revealing that he had become more human by nature, but had given himself a name: Robert Schillinger. During this mission, they also retrieved a chemical formula for a synthetic blood substitute, eliminating the need for human feedings. Long-term plans were set in place, as a chess game of information and spycraft were utilized until a pivotal moment in 1988. At the height of the Cold War, Kara received information that Schillinger and his closest associate, the now-commander of the enemy faction of Vampyres (Pyrates) were uniting for a period of time in Russia. A mission was hastily planned and Kara left with only Alice and Sonya to kill the enemy leadership duo. Sonya had entirely opposed the plan, but departed with Alice and Kara as a measure of extra protection.

This plan turned out to be calculated by Schillinger, who had intentionally leaked the information to set a trap for Kara. Wanting to exploit her incredible telekinetic and volatile abilities, he captured the three of them and imprisoned them in a Russian Gulag. Kara was raped by Schillinger until she conceived a child, and was tended to by Alice and Sonya throughout the brief pregnancy. Kara gave birth to twins, Ava and Annabelle, who later become known as Raven and Violet. At the time of birth, Schillinger was unaware that she had conceived twins, and whisked Ava away as soon as she was born. Alice helped deliver Annabelle (Violet) in secret, and with Sonya's help, they escaped the prison with Kara and the child. The risk of losing both Kara and her child provided them with an emotional motivator to violently escape from the prison and hide in the Russian countryside until help from Aerael could be reached.

While Sonya hid the child from Kara within the American foster system to further protect her psyche from the damaging memories she had endured, Alice utilized a series of codenames, aliases, and confidential informants to arrange safe passage back to Aerael. From there, Kara's Counsel was sent to remote corners of the world on "rotations" to watch for Schillinger and Kilkovf. While this was helpful in gathering information, the core purpose of the "rotations" concept was to allow Alice and Sonya to aid in Kara's psychological recovery. In the meantime, Alice and Sonya brought Tony, Eric, and Jared into the city to fill a critical shortage in trustworthy, high-skill personnel. After proving themselves to Kara, they each joined rotations at will and became a part of her Counsel over time.

Sonya was one of the only three individuals to know of Ava and Annabelle, with Sonya and Alice swearing to secrecy with the feat that the Creature would exploit Annabelle or steal her in the same way he had with Ava. Due to Kara's traumatic suppression of the events, she was not aware of her daughters' existence and Ava's (Raven's) fate until many years later in 2003. Anna was quickly adopted into the city under the name of Violet and kept a secret to everyone but Alice, Sonya, and Kara. Kara avoided a role as a mother, allowing the city and her Counsel to influence Violet's growth instead. Sonya played an instrumental part of this role, providing frequent visits and facilitating the union of Violet and Jared as friends and neighbors until Jared was moved to Aerael's Counsel's quarters.

Violet was willingly converted by Kara in 2005 and provided further, more personal incentive to protect Aerael from attack. Sonya's connections from her time spent escaping Russia played a vital role in tracking Kilkovf's movements, and after capturing and interrogating one of his associates, Sonya believed Kilkovf to be a key factor in the weapons and armament supply for the countries involved in the Global War on Terror. After Kara further interrogated Kilkovf's associate through various torture methods, ultimately killing him in cold blood, She dedicated a mission to Afghanistan to find Schillinger's right-hand man and planned to interrogate him in order to obtain the whereabouts of her nemesis. Sonya failed to stop this concept, and as Krystal supported Kara unconditionally, the mission was planned and executed during the opening chapter of *Affliction.*

## Personality & Beliefs

In old journals, Kara described Sonya in her teenage years as "...a woman with the indomitable power of spirit only borne in saints and goddesses..." and was later complimented in the same manner with the description of Sonya's adulthood being "...a paradoxically 'herbivorous' apex predator; a steely-eyed yet warm woman of the highest moral standard..." These descriptions matched those of Valterius' opinion, having agreed with Sonya's sense of right and wrong more often than Kara's. Even as a servant in childhood and adolescence, Sonya's amicability came from a sense of understanding rather than that of sheer compliance. Although she knew her upbringing was both violent and abusive, she transformed that experience into the knowledge of what she wanted to save people from, which she was ultimately able to do once she was a Vampyre.

Sonya acknowledges specific aspects of multiple religions, preferring none but adopting basic ethical principles from several belief systems to include Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism. Through her experiences, she acknowledges the darkness in the world and believes it to be necessary in order to provide a contrast upon which the principles of a general "good" are created. Although she does not wish for evil to perpetually plague the Human and Vampyre races, she sees them as an opportunity to overcome and learn from certain experiences. Alongside Valterius, Sonya was largely the individual in both Aerael and Vanaheim that people felt most comfortable approaching with personal issues.

## Description

Sonya stands at five feet and eight inches, weighing roughly 140lbs and sporting a slim but athletic figure (as most Vampyres do). At most times, she appears to be "skinny," but Sonya holds a high percentage of lean muscle mass and is an indomitable fighter in any close-quarters situation. Her posture, movement, and general demeanor is relaxed and peaceful; her blonde hair and earthy-green eyes (close to hazel, but with a dominant emerald color) give her a composed and refined appearance. Sonya typically dresses in casual clothing, wearing chic and fashionable clothing as an excuse to continue her stress-relieving hobby of shopping for anything and everything. While her appearance takes the form of a subtle sophistication, she enjoys lounging with her groups of friends and is just as often found wearing plush pajamas with Violet as she is a blazer when introducing new Vampyres to Aerael.

## Titles

### *Spirit*

A codename used by Alice to help Sonya escape from the USSR with Annabelle (Violet) and return to the United States in the 1980's. This name was adopted from one of Kara's journal entries and the continuing mention of Sonya's ability to "keep everyone's spirits high in the face of hardship."

## Relationships

Sonya has a vast multitude of friendships that extend to individuals and families within Aerael and Vanaheim as well as those Vampyres that choose to live among human society. Aside from these friendships and the pseudo-siblinghood she shares with Kara and Valterius, Sonya is Asexual/Aromantic and has no desire for intimacy or romantic relationships. In spite of her own preferences, Sonya revels in the celebration of relationships amongst other people and thoroughly enjoys weddings, bridal showers, bachelorette parties, and any celebrations relating to pregnancy or childbirth (baby showers are uncommon amongst Vampyres due to the rapid progression of most pregnancies).

## Expanded Universe - Epilogues

*(SERIES-WIDE SPOILERS AHEAD)*

Some of the following content is considered to be *Expanded Universe*, and is not expressly stated in the series:

After the events of *Despair,* Sonya saw a grand vision of the goodwill she could put into the world as a Vampyre in the new world, helping unite the remaining population of the United States by providing guidance and to Amy as needed. Amy's duties as President led Sonya to a similarly impactful role in converting the Kane-Hudson Teaching Hospital into the Kane-Hudson Center for New Dawn Vampyrism (colloquially referred to as "the Center"). As the Director of the Center, Sonya oversaw its daily operations once running, and with Amy's permission and oversight, used the New Dawn Mutagen to convert willing humans into Vampyres. She, along with Eric (who joined the Center as a staff member shortly after its completion) compiled a list of basic requirements for human applicants in order to screen for personality and mental health conflicts (this was with the understanding that the world needed to avoid any dangerous or misguided human from using the enhancements associated with Vampyrism to do harm).

As Eric stepped away from the Center to create a multi-billion dollar technology empire known as the Binary Aggregate, Sonya similarly saw another calling and passed her position as Director to Andrea Scott, with Rachel becoming Assistant Director within a matter of months. Turning her focus to those that were denied the New Dawn Mutagen because of prior traumas or mental health issues, Sonya began the Aerael Restoration Project, co-funded by Krystal's personal funds and federal grants courtesy of Amy. After only eight months, the city was fully completed, with modernization efforts made with the intent of becoming a living, educational, and working space for those with environmental, psychosocial, personality, and mood disorders. Sonya was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2071 for her efforts in aiding sexual trauma, domestic violence, and PTSD survivors, all of which had a place in Aerael to feel at home and at peace.