User Profile

[OOC Information]
Name: Cheryle
Age: 21
AIM / E-mail / LiveJournal: chkittie / RedHeadFanFreak@hotmail.com / blue_sweetheart


[IC Information]
Character Name: Datura
Series: Forever Odd (An Odd Thomas Novel)
Gender: Female
Age: 26
Species: Human. We think.
Sexuality: Men are such wonderful toys~

Appearance: Five-foot-five and built to seduce, Datura is described at one point as a succubus. Her hair, full-bodied and platinum blonde, is cut short to frame a catlike face and blue-eyes. She is, simply put, built to kill with a look. Also, as a personal rule, she wears all black, and anyone who works with her is required to as well (Roger Smith syndrome, anyone?). Normally included in her wardrobe is a chain, on which is attached a ruby-red, tear-shaped stone, about the size of a peach pit. This is where she’s collected her thirty ti bon ange. This seems to have gone missing upon her arrival in Manhattan.


Personality: At first appearance, Datura might seem interested in anything and everything you say. Of course, this is most likely because you’re paying her for it. Underneath this nice layer things start to mix and mingle a bit. Datura is flat out crazy. She’s obsessed with the occult, attracted to anything and everything supernatural (including human sacrifice), and unafraid to use what she’s got to experience it all. If she’s gotta strip down to experience a ghost’s presence, she will. If she has to share her blood, her body, any piece of her to get what she wants, she will. She plans ahead, knows how to manipulate a situation using her femininity, and will stop at nothing to get what she wants.


Abilities: SEX. She can shoot a gun and talk a man up. She’s in-touch with the supernatural (in some cases), though she can’t actually see or talk to any spirits. This is only ever seen during occultish or voodoo rituals.

It’s not really certain whether or not Datura actually has powers (unless mild insanity counts), but in Manhattan they’ll be limited down to that of a normal person. She’ll be able to feel a spirit that reaches for her on occasion, but she won’t be able to hear or otherwise sense one unless it comes into contact with her, and she certainly won’t be stealing anyone’s essence. She might try, but attempts will fail. Manhattan doesn’t need zombies on top of everything else. x_x

As a phone-sex operator, Datura has learned her way around men and the occasional woman. She knows what makes a man tick, and knows how to use that to her advantage. Over time she’s found ways to talk almost anyone into anything she needs them to do. Sadly for us, there isn’t really a way to put a cap on someone’s speaking ability short of cutting that someone’s tongue off.

In concern to the "serpent entwined in her ribs," it's not there. It never really existed in canon, despite Datura's persistence in believing that it was there. She'll still believe it's there, and will most likely tell anyone who asks that she and the serpent have made alternate arrangements (there aren't many bananas in Manhattan).



Weaknesses: She’s crazy? Datura has pure confidence in herself, which leads her to underestimate on occasion. She’s also very sure of every notion she has, even the wrong one, and will stop at nothing until she is proved correct. Datura is, as much as she will deny it, very human. There are no extra buit-in protections to her, and her cockiness in certain situations can lead to someone else gaining the upper hand fairly easily. This is part of the reason she keeps Chevals Robert and Andre around, but her little pets are dead/not here.

The only time we ever see Datura nervous is when she’s finally about to experience Sight. There are very few instances that can completely knock her down, though when she’s surprised (because she tends to plan for every little detail) she loses herself for a few moments. It takes her a few minutes to reboot, and often times she’s lost a lot of ground before she finally figures out a new plan.


Manhattanite or outsider? Outsider.


History: Always one for using what the good lord gave her to her advantage, Datura started her career out in a couple porn films for the extra cash. When they’d had enough of her, she needed a new source of income. She met the owner of an online porn store and phone-sex operation, and the two eventually married. When he died, she inherited his business. A wealth of money, power over poor pathetic men...it was more than a girl could ask for. Her obsession with the occult had always been pronounced, to the point where she was invited to secret rituals and experiences throughout the world. From letting herself be groped and entered by an angry ghost to watching a Haitian girl sacrificed, Datura made sure to experience it all. At age nineteen, she charmed a snake-spirit into her body, where it made itself at home in her ribs to give her one thousand years of life, as long as it is satiated by a banana (the forbidden fruit of Eden) twice a day. (As far as we can tell, this last bit is in her mind.) But she could never see the spirits themselves.

The next bit will require a little knowledge about Voodooism. Firstly, since it was mentioned at the beginning of the app (should have attended to it there, oh well) is the term ti bon ange. Voodooists believe that the human spirit has two parts, called the gros bon ange (the “big good angel”), and the ti bon ange (the “little good angel”). The gros bon ange is the life force of a person, the piece that animates them. This is the piece received at conception, and given back to the lord upon death. The ti bon ange is the essence of a person, their “portrait”. This piece does not return to God right away, and instead wanders for a time being, leaving it open to capture. A bokor (Voodoo Priest dealing in black magic) can capture this essence. If the bokor is skilled enough, he or she can take it from a living person. Cheval (used by Datura to refer to her assistants) is the French word for “horse,” which by all means makes sense with how she treats the men. In Voodooism, however, a Cheval is a fresh corpse in which a voodooist might insert a ti bon ange. Given Cheval Andre and Cheval Robert’s personalities (or lack thereof), as well as their smell, it isn’t easy to doubt that they are not, in fact, corpses that Datura has found. Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past Datura to have done it.

From a frequent caller, one Danny Jessup (a close friend of Odd Thomas), Datura learned of the young man Odd and his ability to see spirits. From there, her mind was convinced that not only could Odd, a mundunugu in her mind, conjure them, but he could also allow her to see them. She and her thugs break into Danny’s house, kill his step-father, and kidnap the handicapped boy. They retreat to a disaster-destroyed casino/hotel, and wait for Odd’s psychic magnetism to bring him to them. In the meantime, Datura occupies herself with a little bit of decorating, a few glasses of wine, and the strapping of Danny to a bomb.

Odd arrives and things take off. He meets Datura in the room she’s prepared for herself, and the woman doesn’t hesitate in putting on the charm. We see inside and out of Datura’s characteristics and little rituals (at one point, she shares her blood with Chevals Robert and Andre). Any protests Odd has to her notions are overlooked, until Odd is finally forced to lie and get Datura and her chevals downstairs to the casino, where he can conjure up spirits for her. In an act of pure venomous intent, Datura begins insulting one of the casino’s spiritual inhabitants with the truth of the girl’s two living sisters. An angry spirit feeds off this maliciousness, turns poltergeist, and gives Odd the chance he needs to escape for the time being.

Once things have settled, Datura realizes that Odd has given them the slip, and she and the goons head on back upstairs to catch him and Danny before they leave. Their arrival, however, shows not Danny’s splattered remains, but an empty room. The phone-sex operator goes into a blind, screaming rage of a temper tantrum, until the boys are sent out to find Mr. Thomas and bring him back.

Gun shots alert Datura and Cheval Andre back toward one of the suites, where Odd has killed Cheval Robert. They can find neither (Odd’s in hiding and Cheval Robert fell off the balcony, twelve stories down). Instead, she makes it clear to Odd that his psychic magnetism will lead her to him, it’s only a matter of time. While she waits for this to happen, Datura decides to investigate the big, beautiful paw prints in the dusty soot of the hotel’s remains. The trail leads her, strangely enough, straight to Odd.

In the way of her mind, Datura convinces herself that Odd is, in fact, an isangoma, a shapeshifter of sorts, and that Odd had turned to a large cat (leopard? panther?) and made the paw prints himself. Odd’s explanation that the prints were made by a mountain lion goes unnoticed until Datura finally whips around to see the beast itself. The hungry lion pounces, and Datura’s dying shrieks are the last we hear from her...

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