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User Name/Nick: Shankill
User DW: huddle
AIM/IM: mintyfreshevil
E-mail: whiskeybythepint at gmail dotcommmm
Other Characters: Duke Crocker, Sterling Archer, Esther Coleman

Character Name: Bleu
Series: Sacré Bleu
Age: Roughly 40,000. Appears to be in her early twenties.
From When?: The Colorman's first death, when Lucien and Henri burn his cached paintings in the Parisian Catacombs.

Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Bleu is by nature destructive and creative, something we can't fault her for - she didn't choose for her inspiration to bestow both ecstasy and pain on the artists she works with, or for it to usually take their lives. Being a muse means she has to take her artists to the depths of pleasure and suffering, and this is usually enough to kill them. This is exactly what happened with Vincent Van Gogh; she drove him into insanity and he created Starry Night, one of the world's most beloved paintings, yet lost his life. There is, as she says, always a price for art.

But she can learn to set the price a lot lower.

In her pursuit of worship from painters Bleu is single-minded and lets nothing get into her way, frequently destroying sanity and lives as she goes. She casually murders anyone who gets into her way, and worse still, has immediately vacated her current bodies at the murder scenes, leaving her former hosts bewildered and terrified, holding a weapon over a dead body with no recollection of what just happened. She possesses people, usually women, who fit her chosen artist's physical ideal, and uses said host bodies to seduce the artists. (She is capable of creating her own body from scratch, as she did with Juliette, her Barge body. However, she often deems this too much work, especially if the artist is already in love with someone.)

It is possible for her to influence a painter only for a small amount of time and minimize the Sacré Bleu's effects on them. She can stop murdering indiscriminately, and stop treating her host bodies like outfits to be taken on and off instead of individual people. A lot of her negativity is due to living with the Colorman for millennia, as he is a hateful entity with little morals. Bleu is not overburdened herself in the morality department, having seen, been victim of, and perpetrated many great injustices in her time, but is fully open to the idea of changing. With the right warden, one with a great deal of blunt understanding and patience, she can learn to keep her power in check and use it so that its creative benefits far outweigh its destructive properties. Bleu is always going to be dangerous, but after so long, it's tiring being deadly.
Item: None.

Abilities/Powers:

• The Sacré Bleu. The Sacré Bleu is complicated and more than a little confusing, but here goes. The Sacré Bleu is Bleu's life-force, essence, and the source and conduit of her power. Freshly harvested from an existing painting and her body (in a ritual only the Colorman knows; she is unconscious through most of it), it is a powder of pure blue pigment which can be mixed to make paints. When an artist uses paint made with the sacred blue, he or she comes into Bleu's power and under her divine influence, and she in turn begins to draw their life force from them. The blue is very potent, both a blessing and a curse. When it is used, the artist will experience creative ecstasy and Bleu will appear to them as their ideal lover, nearly always modeling for them. However, in return she takes the artist's health, a great deal of their sanity and memory, and ultimately their life. Most of her powers are not accessible without raw Sacré Bleu and a painting, and she will arrive on board lacking both (and a way to keep the blue from building up in her body).


• Body Possession and Creation. Bleu is a spirit, and does not have a human body of her own. She takes form by gaining a human body, either possessing a living person or creating a new functional form from a corpse. When she possesses a human they do not realize she's in control, nor do they realize what's happening; if she inhabits it for an extended period of time, the body will die. When she creates a body from a corpse, she can mold it to her particular preferences and inhabit it without incident. If she vacates the body it is still alive but mindless, more or less an automaton. Her current body is a refurbished corpse whom she has named Juliette. It would be best for everyone on board if she did not have this power, as she would be wont to jump from person to person at her whimsy.


• Memory Erasure. Once again, possible when an artist is in the presence of the Sacré Bleu. Bleu simply smoothes over their memory, ensuring the affected artist is not aware of the specifics of their time with her. This also happens automatically for the time she spends in a person's body. This power is not necessary at all on the Barge.


• Temporal Manipulation. The exact extent of this in the book is never quite explained, but Bleu can slow or stop time when she chooses - or rather operate outside of it. This is usually meant to inspire, as when she took her lover Lucien to La Grenouillère despite it having burned down 17 years prior, or to allow her artist time to produce more paintings - she might spend two months with them only for a few days to have officially passed. She also uses it more benevolently; when Monet's wife Camille was dying, she inspired him to paint a portrait at her bedside (Madame Monet on her Deathbed), giving him a few more hours with Camille before she died. This power isn't easy to transfer to the Barge at all, although it is the one she is most responsible with.


• Strength and Endurance. The one power that is inherently Bleu and does not rely on the Sacré Bleu to manifest. Although far from being the sort of physical presence one might think of as "superhuman," Bleu is stronger than a human, shown when she breaks a spine and kicks through thick wooden doors. Her thresh-hold for injury is also higher than a human's; a blow to the head that would have knocked a human unconscious for hours only gave her a brief blackout and a nasty bruise. These traits could be easily downgraded to baseline human, although this is the one special power I'd prefer be kept as is - it's also the one she uses least frequently.


Personality: As the prologue to the book states, "you cannot get a grip on blue." "Blue is sly, slick… a slippery trickster." She is incredibly difficult to define, simply because she encompasses so much and easily takes on such diverse roles and tasks. How, exactly, does one describe the color blue? For that is, at her core, exactly what Bleu is.

It's important to start out by saying Bleu isn't human. She's a goddess, ageless and timeless, with the ability to live in the human world and has done so for nearly forty thousand years. In that time she has seen a great deal of major world history firsthand and influenced people as varied as Paleolithic shamans to Celtic warriors, medieval devotional painters to the new libertine artists of the Age of Enlightenment. Moreover, she's lived alongside these people as a human the entire time, taking on many different forms, guises, and lives. She informs Renoir that "all women are different, but they're all one woman," a perspective that may not be true but certainly applies to Bleu's existence. Inspiring artists means becoming their ideal and she's had to change for nearly every artist she works with, and the scope of the lives she's lived are enormous. Sequestered virgins, celebrated harlots, pagan goddesses, the Virgin Mary, beaten victims, glorified idols, murdered women and murderesses - she has been and can be all these things depending on circumstance. Her wide experience makes her very difficult to shock or enrage with atrocities, and she views humans from an outside perspective - she loves them, but is decidedly not one no matter how well she plays the role. Humans are lesser than her, and virtually all their doings are familiar.

To an extent, humans are expendable. Bleu likes them well enough, but doesn't value them without getting to know them (and is usually only interested if they can be of use to create Sacré Bleu). She loves her artists - it is this love that drives her to take the form and life of their ideal in order to inspire them - but even they are short-lived things, to be treasured while they last and remembered with fond regret after their deaths. This is not at all to say that Bleu isn't passionate; the exact opposite, in fact. After eons of existence, living in the moment is where Bleu finds her joie de vivre. She relishes the emotion she draws from antagonism, flirtation, innocence, or admiration, and there's a kind of power in it as well as a lot of fun. Human emotion is what muses do best, which explains why Bleu is so quick to slough it off when not "in character." She is very aware of her own emotions but keeps distant from them - mostly to avoid keeping herself safe from the Colorman. When we see her as herself, she at first only argues familiarly with the Colorman; when Toulouse-Lautrec and Lessard find her out of his reach and she admits what she is, she finally rants and cries after millennia of his company. After this, she finds she feels strangely empty.

It is not possible to fully describe Bleu without mentioning the Colorman. He was her first worshipper and artist, the shaman who brought her into being and who has been her constant companion ever since. He's the one who knows the ritual to harvest the Sacré Bleu and extend both their lives and powers, he has repeatedly helped raise her from the dead and gain new bodies, and he takes care of their business and welfare while Bleu is with her artists. However, he is a misanthropic, hateful individual with a pronounced sadistic streak and a complete disregard for others. He has tried to take control over Bleu, murdered her artists when he decides she's handling them badly, and has molested her when she was unconscious. Bleu, as a naturally creative/destructive muse, is unafraid of causing death although she takes little delight in suffering and she certainly doesn't like her authority undermined. Due to this she's got a brassy, demanding side to her personality, and she's a bit of a drama queen - you have to be if you're a muse and you live with someone like that. Her dealings with humans depend largely on the approach she intuits would best fit, but with the Colorman - and whenever she is herself - Bleu gives absolutely no fucks.

She, in fact, has no shame at all. This is true sexually; even Bleu doesn't deny that she is a slut, which is in the job description, a great way to inspire love and art, and really fun. She also has no qualms about violating monogamy or even using an underage body to seduce an artist if that's what they prefer. Nakedness, even in an age when such a time is scandalous, is something she enjoys. Her shamelessness manifests too in her waste of human life. When posing as Leanan Sidhe she was perfectly okay with causing deaths on her own side; when a pimp accosts her in an alleyway she simply dashes him against a wall and snaps his spine. She feels regret and sadness about the artists whose deaths she has caused, but not those she kills otherwise (and especially not when she and the Colorman temporarily kill each other). In fact the only time in the book that she is ashamed at all is when she admits that the Colorman has control over her. Death does not bother her; she admittedly has few morals herself.

Nonetheless, Bleu insists she isn't always a monster. She is a force of nature, imagination and art incarnated, and her satisfaction at bringing passion to artists and beauty to the world is immeasurable. She loves her artists, enough to put up with all kinds of volatile behavior and madness and despair that would break a human lover - and to put up with it again and again and again with each new painter. She cares enough to use her powers to give Monet extra time with his dying wife Camille. She loves Lucien enough to create an entire body, just for him. But her powers are also incredibly dangerous, and her presence is often fatal and nearly always troublesome. Bleu is not good, but she isn't bad either. She's simply a force to be reckoned with, and perhaps guided.

Barge Reactions: As a very ancient being who inhabits the Moore-verse, Bleu has seen some incredibly bizarre shit in her day. Her world includes vampires, angels, demons, sea monsters, and zombies, among other things, and although she deals solely with humans in the book she's probably met several of the above/knows of more. By this point she is hard to surprise, and much more likely to look at people in terms of their personalities than their appearance or species. An alien is about as likely to impress her as a Dutchman. However she is a very opinionated creature and there's likely to be some cultural clash with most people she talks to. Her moral ambiguity throughout the years also means she isn't going to judge people unless they personally offend her. Genocide? Sometimes that works. Insulting painting? You are going down.

Breaches and floods will be difficult for her, because in her experience she's the only one who influences perception or setting. Part of her will be greatly amused by going along for the ride, part of her may realize how frustrating it is to suddenly act like someone not yourself and apply this to her own habits.

Path to Redemption: Bleu is a destructive spirit. We have to start with that. By nature she is designed to attach herself to and exploit artists to the utmost reaches of their mental, creative, and physical ability, eventually draining their life force or health and dooming them to a slow death. She takes over the bodies of human men and women to do this, and has previously been a Celtic warrior goddess responsible for the death of hundreds purely to feed her own power - this is the example given in canon but due to her age and life experience, it is highly unlikely this is the only time she's been responsible for a slaughter.

However, a great deal of Bleu's negative influence is directly tied to the Colorman and his degenerative and violent effects on her. They are intrinsically linked, and he is a hateful and haughty being. She is working in canon to devise a way to kill him, with the help of two artist friends; she is aware she can be a much more responsible being without him, and can respect herself far more. She has ideals she wishes to conform to, and changes she wishes to make. There are many ways to minimize the negative effects of her presence, and she needs someone to help her identify and utilize these methods.

In canon's rather abrupt "I'm-writing-on-a-deadline" ending, she overcomes her considerable flaws simply by taking a new Colorman, and of course true love conquers all. But I believe change comes from the self and not a partner, and I would like to explore the hang-ups and attitudes Bleu has and needs to change on her own terms. Taking a more benevolent partner may be greatly helpful but before she can become a positive force and not simply a draining one, she needs to identify her own failings and find ways to better them. This would include developing more sympathy for the people she (by nature) influences, minimizing the damage she does to them, and learning to live by drawing from art and inspiration rather than pure passion. Bleu wants to change. She just doesn't know how.

History: Bleu was created around 38,000 BCE. Her origin story is a bit odd, but then, she's a goddess. The being now known as the Colorman was exiled from his tribe and took to the wilderness, following a trail to a meteorite's impact site. There he found the first bit of Sacré Bleu, and with it he created paint and made cave art.

This brought Bleu into being and she took the Colorman as her lover and partner; the Sacré Bleu gave them both power and kept him alive throughout the millennia. In that time she has been thousands of people, serving as inspiration to many artists and others besides. Upon hearing about the Pictish rebellion against the Roman invasion of Britain, she and the Colorman headed to Scotland in 122 CE. The Picts had a long tradition of using blue war paint, and when made with the Sacré Bleu, the peoples united under Bleu's power and named her Leanan Sidhe, taking her as their goddess and the Colorman as their king. Under their rule, the Picts were able to demolish entire Roman legions and turn back the invasion.

But they could never stay in one place forever. During the Middle Ages, after the Church decreed the Virgin Mary was to be portrayed wearing blue, Bleu and the Colorman traveled Europe and worked with the glassmakers making stained-glass windows for the cathedrals. There are still to this day windows that she influenced, but due to the unfortunate medieval tendency to take anything magical and go into a frothing religious frenzy, Bleu has become disenchanted with cathedrals - she's just been burned as a witch too many times to enjoy them anymore.

She did have luck during the Renaissance: she worked with Botticelli, who burned a great many of his (her) paintings in a fit of religious inspiration (not her doing, Savonarola's), and with Michelangelo (who was "an annoying little poofter" in Bleu's words - she did not enjoy having to take a male body in order to become his paramour, and he sometimes refused to use her color altogether). As always Bleu jumped from model body to model body, influencing her artists' minds and taking her Sacré Bleu paintings to sustain the Colorman and herself.

Her interaction with the Parisian impressionists in the 1800s began with Manet, to whom she was Victorine Meurent (the model for his Olympia) and later Berthe Morisot. The Impressionists agreed with her and she switched to various other artists and their love interests. To Monet she was Camille, to Renoir she was Margot, to Toulouse-Lautrec she was Carmen, to Seurat she was Dot, and to Gauguin she was Vuvuzela (those last two are not based in historical fact). We do not know who she was to Vincent Van Gogh, but when the Colorman suspects Van Gogh of hiding a Sacré Bleu painting from him he shoots the artist.

In 1891, not long after his death, Van Gogh's contemporaries, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Lucien Lessard, begin to take into account the cryptic messages about "blue," the strange Colorman who always supplies artists with it, the loss of time and memory these artists and their models experienced, and their unusual and often sudden deaths. Eventually the two know enough to find the model they know, "Juliette," and attempt to rescue her from the Colorman's insidious influence, only for her to spill out the entire story and explain the reasons. She dos, however, need their help to free herself from the Colorman, and convinces the two to find him and burn his remaining paintings (believing her raw amount of Sacré Bleu will hold her through).

Lessard and Toulouse-Lautrec do indeed find the Colorman, tracking him to a chamber in the Parisian catacombs where he's hidden extra paintings to sustain himself. They kill him, and burn the paintings.

In canon this is temporarily effective. For the Barge's purposes, Bleu will have died when her paintings were burned.

Sample Journal Entry: Test drive
Sample RP:
Madame Lessard was a formidable woman. Bleu is very aware of this; even if she had never possessed the woman and drifted through her mind, or that of her husband or son, she'd know that Mme. Lessard could create a perfect baguette without watching the ovens, scare the thieves out of her bakery with one barked word, and brain a goddess with a cooking utensil. As much as it had annoyed Bleu, she couldn't begrudge her that. She'd totally deserved it - and hadn't Madame Lessard's choice of weapon paid off?

There is no ancient obsidian knife here. There's no Roman gladius, no flintlock pistol, no metal staff or heavy shield. This would be absolutely fine if this place wasn't so full of weirdos likely to go off at the drop of a hat (or, as is more likely in Bleu's case, a skirt), but even a goddess has to be careful. So, taking a leaf from Madame Lessard's book, she makes her way to the kitchen during dinner prep and steps in with a smile.

"Bonsoir," she chirps to the staff, flashing a demure smile. "Please don't mind me, my cabin is missing something necessary." It isn't even a lie. She glides over to a cupboard and begins searching through it, sifting through pans as she calls "May I borrow some flour?" Finally her fingers close around a sturdy handle, and she smirks as she pulls a crepe pan out of the cupboard.

She lifts it up, examining it, taking in the heft and the metal's thickness. It's heavier than the pan Madame Lessard had hit her with, but its twin in size and shape. It isn't as good as a blade or gun, but there's no armory here to raid and she is far more likely to get away with taking this than a knife. "Ah, this is just what I need!" she exclaims, her eyes lighting up like a child's would when receiving a present. "And the flour too, if you please. I need quite a bit for my maman's recipe."

This smile has disarmed military men, brought holy men to their knees, and charmed the clothes off of virgins. Bleu just hopes it works as well on the dinner shift staff.

Special Notes: