Sandraudiga, the Maiden of Defeat

 Katherine Weiss was born into an upper class family of German immigrants fleeing the aftermath of WWI. Raised in relative comfort and instilled with an analytical and accurate sensibility, it was only natural that she would enter medical school after displaying interest in understanding the human body after witnessing the aftermath of a car accident as a teenager. 

Easily taking to the hard and competitive work of a medical student, she saw many of her fellows either drop out or give up more than once. Farewell parties were a semi-common occurrence for their washout friends. Still, Katherine saw that even when all seemed lost, such as after a failed test or exam, there was always an opportunity to take the lessons that losing taught and use them to succeed.

Graduating salutatorian from her medical school after several years of intense training and study, she was soon approached by more than one impeccably dressed gentlemen with clipboards. Answering their questions truthfully, she was more than shocked one day receiving a phone call with instructions to report to her new job in Langley, Virginia as a surgical consultant for the CIA. The early 60's was a time period of great turmoil for Uncle Sam, and it required a long hand to guard against any future threats. She accepted out of a dutiful sense of repayment for the country sheltering her family during her youth.

After the requisite civilian bootcamp, Dr Weiss was attached to an operations unit in Brazil during the lead up to the American coup of 1964. What seemed to be a tropical vacation quickly turned into the grim realities of global politics as she discovered her purpose was to maintain the physical and mental health of the CIA operatives running missions...as well as make sure any high value captives survived enhanced interrogation long enough to divulge their secrets.

Distasteful work was still work, and justification after justification turned into scientific fascination. She became much more versed in the multitude of ways a body could be maimed, healed, weakened, or strengthened through certain treatments. The dispassion of her purpose gave her a wealth of practical knowledge.

As the months went on, her workplaces went from city centers to surrounding houses to remote settlements to a black site deep in the jungle. Here, the CIA was hunting rebel leaders that were rumored to be working with one of the deep jungle indigenous tribes. Rumored to be cannibals, the bodies that began to show up were only dismissed as scare tactics. It was only when the camp began to slowly degrade, their communications breaking, their vehicles sabotaged, their equipment destroyed that they began to truly understand how fucked they were.

Dr Weiss was sitting in her surgical lab awaiting a death by predator or soldier when the monsters hit the camp. Foul and terrifying creatures shredded what remained of the guards, but didn't touch her. Instead, they pushed and led her deep into the jungle to an abandoned ruin, where the goddess Perchta waited.

A displaced German of similar ancestry, but much older, Perchta was a Tzimisce elder that had journeyed to the dark corners of the wild world to establish a small domain far from the machinations of the Camarilla and the Sabbat. Her philosophy and quest for perfection manifested as a focus on creating beasts from men and pitting them against each other. She had been watching Dr Weiss for some time, and saw potential in her. Tasking her with repairing and healing both her former comrades before they were transmogrified, as well as the tribespeople offered to Perchta as sacrifices, Katherine once again found herself caring for those that had lost, in battle and in life. She began to soak in the despair, the defeat, the echoing gloom and sour taste that either crushed to dust or empowered for victory.

When Perchta finally decided she had earned her apotheosis, Katherine Weiss had been no more for some time. Who remained was Sandraudiga, the Maiden of Defeat. Soul-Shrouded, Bloody Trail. Companion of the broken and bested. Eventually she left her sire, as their clan was wont to do, and traveled back to her homeland. Through old connections, she discovered that officially she had never existed. She was beyond such things as family, and began to travel through the territories of Sabbat and Camarilla alike plying her craft and trade to all who would pay in favors, blood or service to the Goddess.