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beyondthisillusionOn May 2, 1958, Miles and Julia Remington welcomed their second child, a daughter named Danielle, to their family. Born outside of Albuquerque, Danielle was four years younger than her brother, Shawn. To the outside world, the Remingtons were the perfect family, something right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. All they needed was a dog. But the idyllic situation didn’t last long. Six months after Danielle was born, the Remington split-level home was lit on fire one night. Although Miles, Shawn, and Danielle survived, Julia wasn’t so lucky.
As it turned out, when Julia Palmer came to Albuquerque back in 1950, she brought a secret with her. Born to the Palmer Family, a Nevada clan that had been hunting supernatural threats since the 1820s, Julia sought to escape her life of carnage. When she married Miles and changed her name, she hoped that her hunter past was gone forever. But whoever or whatever lit the flame that night had long been seeking revenge on the Palmers and found it in Julia. Whether Miles Remington knew the truth about his wife’s secret life or whether he found out sometime later was always unclear to his children. But what they grew up knowing was a life of revenge because, from November 2, 1958 onward, the Remingtons knew no rest and they knew no home.
Miles brought up his children like soldiers, forever hunting for the creature that killed Julia. And along the way, they took down any supernatural threat they encountered. Danielle grew up more or less raised as a boy, nicknamed ‘Dani’ by her older brother. Shawn, in truth, was more of a parent than Miles ever was, forever taking responsibility for Danielle’s well-being. But while Shawn respected and idolized Miles, Danielle came to resent him for her upbringing. As they traveled across the country, over and over again, Danielle would see what normal children her age were doing and envy them: She wanted to go to school regularly, she wanted to dress up that new Barbie toy, she wanted to play on a volleyball team, she wanted to make out with boys. Instead, what she got were lessons in bow hunting, books about the undead, and long nights sleeping in the backseat of the Remington car while they staked out a potential target.
Danielle and Shawn became aware of their mother’s side of the family as teenagers. Miles would often take them for visits to Las Vegas. But for some reason unknown to the Remington children, it was during one of those visits, in 1975, that Miles Remington finally snapped. He came to a terrible conclusion, that the only way to truly fight the monster was to become one. And so, he sought out and eventually won the favor of a Gangrel named Dan Buckley who agreed to Embrace him. The inevitable became clear to Danielle. Their father would eventually demand that they become vampires as well.
A clever girl, with ambitions of going to college, Danielle managed to find various ways to forestall the inevitable. She argued that Miles needed to have human companions, to guard his sleep during the day and to access places that he, as a vampire, could no longer access. She was able to successfully hold out in 1980, when Shawn dutifully submitted to their father’s wishes and was Embraced by a Ventrue. For another four years, Danielle continued to avoid joining. As it turned out, she and her brother made a terrific team and more and more often, Miles left them to hunt on their own. But in 1984, Miles finally grew tired of waiting and insisted that it was Danielle’s turn to submit to the Embrace. Although she initially tried to resist yet again, a nearly fatal hunt with Shawn convinced Danielle that being a vampire would make her stronger and help protect the brother she loved.
It was Miles who arranged for her Embrace, offering a Mekhet living in Nashville a life boon in exchange for Embracing his daughter. The Mekhet’s name was Amelia Keith. She was unlike any vampire Danielle had ever met. Both kind and charitable, she held onto her humanity, living with a mortal lover and even acting as stepmother to his child. She was compassionate as hell, taking things very slowly to allow Danielle to overcome her fears. The Embrace was gentle, almost like going to sleep. Which made it all the more jarring when Danielle woke up to see Amelia dead and Miles holding the machete which deprived Amelia of her head.
After that, the rift between Miles and Danielle seemed irreparable. For the next year, Danielle continued to hunt alongside her father and her brother, but she found that she could no longer tolerate her father’s domineering attitude or his seemingly unending supply of violence. She hated being a vampire, she hated living under his thumb, and she especially hated the way that Shawn seemed to accept Miles unquestioningly. Although she loved her brother, she loved her independence more and in 1985, an offer that seemed too good to be true presented itself.
The Ventrue’s name was Ruby Madison and she belonged to a covenant called the Ordo Dracul. They were a collective of vampires that developed a unique line of abilities known as ‘Coils of the Dragon.’ The sole purpose of these Coils was to help vampires become more human. Coils could ease the need for blood, help stave off the worst damage from sunlight, and even control the predatory desires of the inner vampire, known as ‘the Beast.’ Danielle jumped at the chance to join the Ordo. The only catch was that Ruby’s coterie of friends was in Las Vegas. Although Danielle tried to convince Shawn to come with her, she ended up leaving the Remington team with Ruby by herself.
Which wasn’t to say she would go without family. Upon returning to Las Vegas, Danielle reunited with the Palmer Family. They were initially hesitant to trust her, but Danielle quickly proved that she was interested in protecting humanity, not eating it. She was granted provisional membership to the family again, and quickly became close to Maria Palmer, a twelve-year-old who was her first cousin once removed. They grew so close, in fact, that it was Danielle who eventually gave Maria away at her wedding. Danielle also formed a connection with Dan Buckley, her father’s sire, who also happened to be a member of the Ordo Dracul.
In the end, she learned more about the Ordo from Buckley than from Ruby. Ruby was secretly a member of another vampire covenant, the Invictus. And she was infiltrating the Ordo in an attempt to find out where the Palmer Family was headquartered. For years, she’d been trying to worm her way into Buckley’s good graces with no luck, so she’d gone out to find the Remingtons. Throughout the late 1980s, she pretended to teach Danielle Ordo spells and rituals (which didn’t exist) while trying to squeeze information out of her. Ruby’s work got sloppy though, and in 1990, Danielle, Buckley, and Maria realized what she was doing. The three of them exposed her to the rest of the Ordo and tried to hunt her down, but she managed to get away.
While the Ordo was grateful to Danielle for her help in exposing a spy, Danielle was disillusioned. She parted ways, amicably, with the covenant and joined a new one, the Circle of the Crone. With their dedication to creating life, she hoped that they, perhaps would help her connect to her humanity where Ruby and the Ordo had failed. She retained close ties to her friends in the Ordo, however; especially Buckley who, by that point, had ascended to the rank of Sheriff of Las Vegas. As Sheriff, it was Buckley’s duty to enforce the laws of the domain and track down abnormalities. He started to take Danielle with him on his investigations and she demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for investigation.
The early 1990s saw other changes in Danielle’s life as well. Now that she had a permanent home, she was free to do many of the things that had previously been forbidden. She cultivated friendships, both among humans and among vampires. An art student at the University of Las Vegas, Brady Thompson, became her best friend. And she started to date. After several relationships with men, she began dating a young woman named Jenni Cassidy. At first, Jenni was mostly an experiment. Danielle enjoyed doing anything that she sensed would offend her father’s conservative values. And she was curious. But ‘curious’ quickly went to ‘completely enamored.’ She fell for Jenni and she fell hard. So hard, in fact, that the two of them started living together. Despite the obviously awkward breach of the Masquerade which separated humans and vampires it involved, Jenni was surprisingly okay with what Danielle was. The only condition put on their relationship was that Jenni never wanted to drink vampire blood and become a ghoul. Danielle was fine with that.
What could have been ‘happily ever after’ turned into history repeating itself. Early in 1994, Danielle’s haven with Jenni was set on fire. Danielle went into a complete fear frenzy and ran away. Jenni, however, wasn’t able to escape. In some ways, Danielle considered the tragedy a reality check. It reminded her how dangerous the existence of vampires was to human beings. And without realizing it, she went on a revenge spiral that echoed her father’s. She began to work with Buckley more and more, covering up Masquerade breaches and hunting down potential threats to the Masquerade within the vampire community. After learning what happened, Shawn came to Las Vegas to reconnect with his sister and was surprised at the change in her attitude. When Buckley offered her the opportunity to become an official Deputy in 1996, she took it.
The year 1996 was a year of change for the Palmer Family as well. Family heads Noah and Lucia Palmer were killed in action and their oldest son, Andrew, became head of the family. Danielle knew it was really Maria who was in charge, however. And the two of them worked together to find ways to exploit weaknesses in the vampire community.
Politics held little interest for Danielle. She actively hated King Cole, the man in charge of all vampires in Las Vegas. To that end, she had no problem making contact with the Sand Snakes, a group of dissidents bent on ending his reign. The way she saw it, turning vampires against each other made life easier for her and the Palmer Family. Let them kill each other. Fewer vampires meant fewer Masquerade breaches and fewer dead humans. In 1998, Shawn stepped into the arena, accepting the rule of Hound, a personal assassin for the King, with duties that involved eliminating troublesome vampires.
The Remington siblings were a powerful and deadly combination. With Buckley feeding them the information they needed, they went up against any number of supernatural beings, referred to as “Cryptids” by the local population. Efficient as they were, Danielle continued to yearn for the human life that had been taken from her by Miles. Her anger against him hardened and she came to see him as the ultimate source of every single misfortune in her life. Strangely enough, neither she nor Shawn had any idea where he was. In the last 1990s, the King declared a blood hunt on him, meaning that if he was seen anywhere in the Las Vegas area, he was to be killed immediately. The King wouldn’t elaborate on his crime. And he was never seen. The Remington siblings were left with no choice but to keep going.
Human life became so important to Danielle that in 2001, she instituted a program within the vampire community. She called it the ‘Stop, Drop, and Roll With It’ program, wherein she encouraged all vampires to get a library card and cut off the two bottom corners. If a fight happened to break out where Masquerade breach seemed inevitable, vampires were ordered to ‘play dead.’ Once taken to the morgue. Anyone carrying a library card with the bottom two corners cut off would be taken to a separate room by some of Danielle’s allies working at the hospital, where they could wake up and slip away, minimal harm done.
Of course, Danielle knew that the program would lead to some minor Masquerade breaches, so she chose her allies very carefully and placed among them Brady Thompson, who’d switched from art to medicine after college and was now a doctor. Danielle took her on as a retainer, asking her to do sketches of any cardholders who came through the ‘Stop, Drop, and Roll With It’ program. If Danielle deemed these vampires a threat, she would pass on the sketches and whatever information she could to the Palmer Family.
The system worked well enough and, for a while, the Palmer Family was doing an efficient job of culling the vampire population. They suffered their fair share of tragedies, including Maria’s husband being killed in action. But that was just the way it was for hunters. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize that there was powerful trouble brewing. Andrew Palmer was growing increasingly restless and mysterious, keeping secrets and acting out. The problem came to a head in 2005 when Maria discovered that he was being controlled by a vampire. And not just any vampire. It was Ruby Madison. Caught in the act, Ruby made a desperate play that led to Andrew kidnapping his own family. While Maria freed them (and killed Andrew in the process), Danielle went after Ruby herself. The night ended in bloodshed and terror, but Ruby was dead and Maria was named the head of the Palmer Family.
An emotional rift formed between Danielle and Maria after that night. Although Danielle had never once acted against the interests of the family, it occurred to Maria that she had the potential to be a powerful enemy. Danielle, likewise, saw the violence in Maria’s soul in killing Andrew—a human. The two of them spoke openly about their feelings and agreed that if either of them ever became a monster, the other would kill her. As time went on, the two of them fell back into a comfortable routine. Danielle was always on hand to help Maria with supernatural matters or watch after her three kids, but their social bond faded a bit. They rarely spoke of anything outside of business.
But in 2015, a Gangrel made a fatal mistake. Foolishly siring Maria’s oldest daughter, Amity, without permission, he incurred the wrath of not only the Las Vegas Sheriff, Deputy, and Hound, but the entire Palmer Family as well. The night after it happened, Maria brought Amity to King Cole’s court herself, to present her daughter and kill the unfortunate Gangrel.
As it turned out, when Julia Palmer came to Albuquerque back in 1950, she brought a secret with her. Born to the Palmer Family, a Nevada clan that had been hunting supernatural threats since the 1820s, Julia sought to escape her life of carnage. When she married Miles and changed her name, she hoped that her hunter past was gone forever. But whoever or whatever lit the flame that night had long been seeking revenge on the Palmers and found it in Julia. Whether Miles Remington knew the truth about his wife’s secret life or whether he found out sometime later was always unclear to his children. But what they grew up knowing was a life of revenge because, from November 2, 1958 onward, the Remingtons knew no rest and they knew no home.
Miles brought up his children like soldiers, forever hunting for the creature that killed Julia. And along the way, they took down any supernatural threat they encountered. Danielle grew up more or less raised as a boy, nicknamed ‘Dani’ by her older brother. Shawn, in truth, was more of a parent than Miles ever was, forever taking responsibility for Danielle’s well-being. But while Shawn respected and idolized Miles, Danielle came to resent him for her upbringing. As they traveled across the country, over and over again, Danielle would see what normal children her age were doing and envy them: She wanted to go to school regularly, she wanted to dress up that new Barbie toy, she wanted to play on a volleyball team, she wanted to make out with boys. Instead, what she got were lessons in bow hunting, books about the undead, and long nights sleeping in the backseat of the Remington car while they staked out a potential target.
Danielle and Shawn became aware of their mother’s side of the family as teenagers. Miles would often take them for visits to Las Vegas. But for some reason unknown to the Remington children, it was during one of those visits, in 1975, that Miles Remington finally snapped. He came to a terrible conclusion, that the only way to truly fight the monster was to become one. And so, he sought out and eventually won the favor of a Gangrel named Dan Buckley who agreed to Embrace him. The inevitable became clear to Danielle. Their father would eventually demand that they become vampires as well.
A clever girl, with ambitions of going to college, Danielle managed to find various ways to forestall the inevitable. She argued that Miles needed to have human companions, to guard his sleep during the day and to access places that he, as a vampire, could no longer access. She was able to successfully hold out in 1980, when Shawn dutifully submitted to their father’s wishes and was Embraced by a Ventrue. For another four years, Danielle continued to avoid joining. As it turned out, she and her brother made a terrific team and more and more often, Miles left them to hunt on their own. But in 1984, Miles finally grew tired of waiting and insisted that it was Danielle’s turn to submit to the Embrace. Although she initially tried to resist yet again, a nearly fatal hunt with Shawn convinced Danielle that being a vampire would make her stronger and help protect the brother she loved.
It was Miles who arranged for her Embrace, offering a Mekhet living in Nashville a life boon in exchange for Embracing his daughter. The Mekhet’s name was Amelia Keith. She was unlike any vampire Danielle had ever met. Both kind and charitable, she held onto her humanity, living with a mortal lover and even acting as stepmother to his child. She was compassionate as hell, taking things very slowly to allow Danielle to overcome her fears. The Embrace was gentle, almost like going to sleep. Which made it all the more jarring when Danielle woke up to see Amelia dead and Miles holding the machete which deprived Amelia of her head.
After that, the rift between Miles and Danielle seemed irreparable. For the next year, Danielle continued to hunt alongside her father and her brother, but she found that she could no longer tolerate her father’s domineering attitude or his seemingly unending supply of violence. She hated being a vampire, she hated living under his thumb, and she especially hated the way that Shawn seemed to accept Miles unquestioningly. Although she loved her brother, she loved her independence more and in 1985, an offer that seemed too good to be true presented itself.
The Ventrue’s name was Ruby Madison and she belonged to a covenant called the Ordo Dracul. They were a collective of vampires that developed a unique line of abilities known as ‘Coils of the Dragon.’ The sole purpose of these Coils was to help vampires become more human. Coils could ease the need for blood, help stave off the worst damage from sunlight, and even control the predatory desires of the inner vampire, known as ‘the Beast.’ Danielle jumped at the chance to join the Ordo. The only catch was that Ruby’s coterie of friends was in Las Vegas. Although Danielle tried to convince Shawn to come with her, she ended up leaving the Remington team with Ruby by herself.
Which wasn’t to say she would go without family. Upon returning to Las Vegas, Danielle reunited with the Palmer Family. They were initially hesitant to trust her, but Danielle quickly proved that she was interested in protecting humanity, not eating it. She was granted provisional membership to the family again, and quickly became close to Maria Palmer, a twelve-year-old who was her first cousin once removed. They grew so close, in fact, that it was Danielle who eventually gave Maria away at her wedding. Danielle also formed a connection with Dan Buckley, her father’s sire, who also happened to be a member of the Ordo Dracul.
In the end, she learned more about the Ordo from Buckley than from Ruby. Ruby was secretly a member of another vampire covenant, the Invictus. And she was infiltrating the Ordo in an attempt to find out where the Palmer Family was headquartered. For years, she’d been trying to worm her way into Buckley’s good graces with no luck, so she’d gone out to find the Remingtons. Throughout the late 1980s, she pretended to teach Danielle Ordo spells and rituals (which didn’t exist) while trying to squeeze information out of her. Ruby’s work got sloppy though, and in 1990, Danielle, Buckley, and Maria realized what she was doing. The three of them exposed her to the rest of the Ordo and tried to hunt her down, but she managed to get away.
While the Ordo was grateful to Danielle for her help in exposing a spy, Danielle was disillusioned. She parted ways, amicably, with the covenant and joined a new one, the Circle of the Crone. With their dedication to creating life, she hoped that they, perhaps would help her connect to her humanity where Ruby and the Ordo had failed. She retained close ties to her friends in the Ordo, however; especially Buckley who, by that point, had ascended to the rank of Sheriff of Las Vegas. As Sheriff, it was Buckley’s duty to enforce the laws of the domain and track down abnormalities. He started to take Danielle with him on his investigations and she demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for investigation.
The early 1990s saw other changes in Danielle’s life as well. Now that she had a permanent home, she was free to do many of the things that had previously been forbidden. She cultivated friendships, both among humans and among vampires. An art student at the University of Las Vegas, Brady Thompson, became her best friend. And she started to date. After several relationships with men, she began dating a young woman named Jenni Cassidy. At first, Jenni was mostly an experiment. Danielle enjoyed doing anything that she sensed would offend her father’s conservative values. And she was curious. But ‘curious’ quickly went to ‘completely enamored.’ She fell for Jenni and she fell hard. So hard, in fact, that the two of them started living together. Despite the obviously awkward breach of the Masquerade which separated humans and vampires it involved, Jenni was surprisingly okay with what Danielle was. The only condition put on their relationship was that Jenni never wanted to drink vampire blood and become a ghoul. Danielle was fine with that.
What could have been ‘happily ever after’ turned into history repeating itself. Early in 1994, Danielle’s haven with Jenni was set on fire. Danielle went into a complete fear frenzy and ran away. Jenni, however, wasn’t able to escape. In some ways, Danielle considered the tragedy a reality check. It reminded her how dangerous the existence of vampires was to human beings. And without realizing it, she went on a revenge spiral that echoed her father’s. She began to work with Buckley more and more, covering up Masquerade breaches and hunting down potential threats to the Masquerade within the vampire community. After learning what happened, Shawn came to Las Vegas to reconnect with his sister and was surprised at the change in her attitude. When Buckley offered her the opportunity to become an official Deputy in 1996, she took it.
The year 1996 was a year of change for the Palmer Family as well. Family heads Noah and Lucia Palmer were killed in action and their oldest son, Andrew, became head of the family. Danielle knew it was really Maria who was in charge, however. And the two of them worked together to find ways to exploit weaknesses in the vampire community.
Politics held little interest for Danielle. She actively hated King Cole, the man in charge of all vampires in Las Vegas. To that end, she had no problem making contact with the Sand Snakes, a group of dissidents bent on ending his reign. The way she saw it, turning vampires against each other made life easier for her and the Palmer Family. Let them kill each other. Fewer vampires meant fewer Masquerade breaches and fewer dead humans. In 1998, Shawn stepped into the arena, accepting the rule of Hound, a personal assassin for the King, with duties that involved eliminating troublesome vampires.
The Remington siblings were a powerful and deadly combination. With Buckley feeding them the information they needed, they went up against any number of supernatural beings, referred to as “Cryptids” by the local population. Efficient as they were, Danielle continued to yearn for the human life that had been taken from her by Miles. Her anger against him hardened and she came to see him as the ultimate source of every single misfortune in her life. Strangely enough, neither she nor Shawn had any idea where he was. In the last 1990s, the King declared a blood hunt on him, meaning that if he was seen anywhere in the Las Vegas area, he was to be killed immediately. The King wouldn’t elaborate on his crime. And he was never seen. The Remington siblings were left with no choice but to keep going.
Human life became so important to Danielle that in 2001, she instituted a program within the vampire community. She called it the ‘Stop, Drop, and Roll With It’ program, wherein she encouraged all vampires to get a library card and cut off the two bottom corners. If a fight happened to break out where Masquerade breach seemed inevitable, vampires were ordered to ‘play dead.’ Once taken to the morgue. Anyone carrying a library card with the bottom two corners cut off would be taken to a separate room by some of Danielle’s allies working at the hospital, where they could wake up and slip away, minimal harm done.
Of course, Danielle knew that the program would lead to some minor Masquerade breaches, so she chose her allies very carefully and placed among them Brady Thompson, who’d switched from art to medicine after college and was now a doctor. Danielle took her on as a retainer, asking her to do sketches of any cardholders who came through the ‘Stop, Drop, and Roll With It’ program. If Danielle deemed these vampires a threat, she would pass on the sketches and whatever information she could to the Palmer Family.
The system worked well enough and, for a while, the Palmer Family was doing an efficient job of culling the vampire population. They suffered their fair share of tragedies, including Maria’s husband being killed in action. But that was just the way it was for hunters. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize that there was powerful trouble brewing. Andrew Palmer was growing increasingly restless and mysterious, keeping secrets and acting out. The problem came to a head in 2005 when Maria discovered that he was being controlled by a vampire. And not just any vampire. It was Ruby Madison. Caught in the act, Ruby made a desperate play that led to Andrew kidnapping his own family. While Maria freed them (and killed Andrew in the process), Danielle went after Ruby herself. The night ended in bloodshed and terror, but Ruby was dead and Maria was named the head of the Palmer Family.
An emotional rift formed between Danielle and Maria after that night. Although Danielle had never once acted against the interests of the family, it occurred to Maria that she had the potential to be a powerful enemy. Danielle, likewise, saw the violence in Maria’s soul in killing Andrew—a human. The two of them spoke openly about their feelings and agreed that if either of them ever became a monster, the other would kill her. As time went on, the two of them fell back into a comfortable routine. Danielle was always on hand to help Maria with supernatural matters or watch after her three kids, but their social bond faded a bit. They rarely spoke of anything outside of business.
But in 2015, a Gangrel made a fatal mistake. Foolishly siring Maria’s oldest daughter, Amity, without permission, he incurred the wrath of not only the Las Vegas Sheriff, Deputy, and Hound, but the entire Palmer Family as well. The night after it happened, Maria brought Amity to King Cole’s court herself, to present her daughter and kill the unfortunate Gangrel.
