Lilith “Lily” Marrow
Overview
A street poet in a city that had long since forgotten how to listen, Lily wandered the abandoned places of Baltimore, scribbling dreams into broken notebooks. Born with a mind too fragile to withstand the weight of what it glimpsed, she lived a half-life among the lost and the dreaming. She made the mistake of stepping into the ruins of an old theater on a night when the stars whispered wrong. A mistake that cost her breath, her future, and her name — remade into something that dreams for others now, but never for herself.
Basics
Attributes
Abilities
Advantages
Merits & Flaws
Rituals & Paths
Experience & Derangements
Survival (0 –> 2) 5xp
Expanded Backgrounds
- Lily’s Herd consists of a loosely connected group of vulnerable, sleeping mortals:
- The homeless in abandoned townhouses.
- Forgotten addicts sleeping rough near the Inner Harbor.
- Lonely figures in broken motels on Baltimore’s edges.
- Notes:
She feeds lightly and reverently, always leaving small offerings: a blanket, a whispered dream, a pressed flower tucked into an old wallet.
They never remember her clearly — only a vague sense of strange dreams.
- Lily’s Mentor is Verity Marrow, her elusive, possibly post-mortal Sire.
Though Verity no longer appears physically, she still influences Lily through: - Whispered riddles bleeding through the Malkavian Cobweb.
- Shattered dreams offering cryptic guidance.
- Strange coincidences — a key left on a windowsill, a name scrawled on a crumbling wall.
- Notes:
Verity’s help is rarely straightforward, often double-edged: sometimes a warning, sometimes an unwanted truth.
- Lily has minimal material wealth:
- She scavenges what she needs from abandoned places.
- She has a small stash of old coins, pawned jewelry, and dusty books hidden at her haven — just enough for basic needs (candle oil, paper, charcoal, batteries for string lights).
- Notes:
She lives like a ghost: poor but self-sufficient in the ruins of Baltimore.
- Lily carries a cracked silver locket (left behind by Verity) that seems to hum softly when death or betrayal is near.
It’s not a formal magical artifact — but among Malkavians, it’s whispered that such tokens carry subtle ties to the Cobweb.
Rights & Possessions
- Small leather-bound sketchbook filled with visions, riddles, and symbols.
- Old, tarnished iron key on a chain around her neck (a token from her Sire).
- Broken pocket watch stuck at 11:11 (keeps it in her coat for comfort).
- Charcoal pencils and stubby old pens for sketching dreams.
- Crumbled poetry book (dog-eared and water-damaged).
- Thin, layered scarves (often used to hide her face when needed).
- Locket with a cracked mirror inside (reflects “future selves,” according to her).
- Small glass vial of sea water from Baltimore Harbor (“To remember the flow of time,” she says).
- The old Inner Harbor district — abandoned warehouses, sleeping homeless, forgotten corners where few venture at night.
- Charles Village and Pigtown backstreets — faded townhouses, flophouses, forgotten shelters.
- Crumbled motels along the industrial edges of Baltimore — she feeds gently on sleeping dreamers, leaving them unharmed but subtly haunted by her presence.
(Her feeding is always soft, discreet, and almost reverent — she never gorges, always slips away like a phantom.)
- Primary Haven:
- The Wren Basement:
A collapsed maintenance room beneath the Senator Theatre — layered with forgotten theater props, broken velvet chairs, water-stained murals, and string lights powered by scavenged generators.
Lily has hidden it expertly; few know the tunnels still exist. It feels more like a dream than a home — filled with scraps of visions, paintings, pressed flowers, and chalk sigils on the walls.
- Battery-powered string lights to light her hidden rooms softly.
- Old, scavenged Victrola record player (still works, barely — plays warped classical records).
- Stacks of filled sketchbooks detailing hundreds of dreams, warnings, and riddles.
- A battered, creaking mattress salvaged from a motel, covered in patchwork quilts.
- Filing cabinet filled with trinkets: rusty keys, broken jewelry, childhood toys, bottle caps — “anchors to lost dreams,” she calls them.
- A heavily worn, navy-blue peacoat lined with hidden pockets for small items.
- Ancient candle collection — in case the lights fail and she needs “firelight to remember the right path.”
Blood Bonds/Vinculi
Description
History
Lilith Marrow was born on June 19, 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland, into a crumbling city already haunted by poverty and the echoes of old American dreams.
Her early life was marked by drifting loneliness — a gifted child abandoned to foster homes and forgotten neighborhoods, often dismissed for her unsettling way of speaking about things that had not yet happened. Even as a human, Lily dreamed true, though no one believed her.
By her twenties, she was scraping by in the shadows of the city — a street poet, a busker, a soft-voiced girl who spoke riddles to a world too loud to listen.
It was in the abandoned ruins of the Wren Theater that her true life ended.
One summer night in 1963, Lily wandered into the collapsing shell of the old Wren, drawn by a feeling she could not name. There, standing amid the dust and broken velvet, was Verity Marrow — a Malkavian elder whose mind had unraveled into pure vision.
Verity saw in Lily a “dream-heavy soul,” one whose mind already floated along the edges of the Cobweb, even before death.
Without warning or consent, Verity Embraced Lily, weaving her into the madness of Kindred existence.
When Lily awoke to her new cursed life, Verity was gone — leaving behind only cryptic words and a shattered, permanent connection to the Malkavian Cobweb.
From that night forward, Lily’s visions sharpened, her dreams tore open, and the boundaries of time collapsed around her. She became a Seer — but a broken one, her insights drifting like leaves on a flood.
For decades afterward, Lily faded into Baltimore’s forgotten places.
She made her haven in the drowned basements and abandoned theaters of the city, surviving by feeding lightly upon the dreaming homeless, the addicts, and the lost — treating each as sacred, never taking more than necessary.
The Cobweb is never silent for Lily.
It whispers half-remembered memories of others, trembles with future tragedies yet to unfold, and weeps with lost dreams.
Through it, Lily sometimes catches fragments of Verity — guiding, warning, or simply singing lullabies no living voice could carry.
Today, Lily is a ghost in a city of ghosts:
- Dreaming truths no one wants to hear.
- Sketching futures she cannot change.
- Drifting softly through Baltimore’s dead streets, barefoot between sorrow and prophecy.
She is not powerful. She is not respected.
But she sees.
And sometimes, that is enough to change everything.