Arianna Grimaldi's page

Albert Charles Ercole Grimaldi's only daughter, Arianna, was born on January 1st of [Insert starting year -19 here]. His wife, unfortunately, did not survive the birth, and died shortly after Arianna was born.

Albert was brother to the crown prince (Ranier III), and worked as the CFO of several of the casinos located through the small monarchy, insuring that operations ran smoothly and money came pouring in.

Albert had 3 sons already, and Arianna was to be his only daughter.

As a young child, Arianna was outgoing and very happy. It's often marvelled by the nanny staff that she did not cry often during her infant years, and usually slept through the night.

As Arianna grew, however, she spent her time roughhousing with her brothers (save her oldest brother, Marco, who was in his late teens at the time); The twins, Phillipe and Jean Claude, quickly learned that Arianna was fearless and surprisingly strong for her age.

For her part, Arianna had fallen in love with the fairy tales that her maids read her before bedtime, but she did not relate with the princess' in those stories; instead, she saw herself as a knight, having adventures and travelling the world protecting damsels in distress.

The first thing that happened to change the course of her destiny came about because of, ironically enough, a game of hide and seek.

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Arianna wanted to find a good place to hide (anywhere on the estate was considered "in bounds") and so ran into the west wing of the mansion, which was largely used for storage of antique furniture. Finding a full-length mirror under one of the dropclothes, she soon forgot about the game and instead took to wandering around the wing, looking at the various treasures owned by her family.

At one point, as if drawn to it, she found herself in one of the rooms where antique weapons were stored. Unlike a display in a museum, these weapons were simply lain upon a shelf, or stored in various stands. Each weapon had a small placard denoting it's country of origin and era.'

While many of the weapons seemed interesting to Arianna, even at her age she knew not to handle them (she did, however, touch a few). She was drawn like a moth to flame to a sheathed short blade. The placard said that it was a Gladius, and discovered during the construction of the Cathedral. Unable to contain her curiousity, Arianna picked up and drew the blade, and was surprised to discover that not only was the blade in perfect condition, but there were glowing runes written along the length of the blade.

As she was tracing her fingers along the length of the runes, she was shocked to discover that they disappeared; so shocked, in fact, that she accidently cut her hand with the rather sharp point of the blade. When she did, she collapsed to the ground, spasming where no one could see her and her mind fled into the realm of dreams. She now remembers the dream with a crystal clarity that belies normal Human memory:

She sat astride the steed, garbed in the armor of a Roman Legionaire. Turning her head, she saw soldiers lined up in orderly ranks behind her, while angels hovered overhead, each garbed for battle as well.

Standing opposite the assembled might of Rome was a horde of bearded men in armed and armored in a with a vast array of equipment, each man carrying what weapons and armor he willed. Above this motley horde few fairies: Obscenely beautiful men and women with pointed ears and butterfly wings.

Arianna took in all this before drawing the blade at her hip, point held aloft towards the sun itself. As she did, she heard the sound of a thousand blades being drawn behind her; such was the precision of the movements that it sounded more like a massive single blade being drawn.

She held her blade aloft for a moment, until the ruckus died behind her, and then with a fluid motion born of decades of experience, she pointed her blade forward and bellowed out "For Rome! Charge!", which was echoed by a thousand voices behind her.

As Arianna's forces moved forward, so did the barbarians, and soon both sides clashed...

Whatever happened next was unknown to Arianna, as she was shaken awake by her father, who asked her if she was hurt. She said that she had cut her hand on the sword, to which her father asked her "Which sword?" and began looking around. She pointed at the place where the small display had stood, but the shelf was empty; further , it appeared that there had never been a blade in that spot.

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Arianna eventually put the entire thing behind her, but when she was 11 she took up fencing. Her father approved, as fencing was seen as a sport played by the nobility, and it gave Arianna a channel for her rather...rambunctious nature.

Arianna was a natural with a blade.

Indeed, several of her instructors used words like "prodigy" and "Olympian" when describing her ability.

Pleased, her father indulged her and allowed her to continue her training. By the age of 14, she had won several regional titles, and was undefeated during her entire membership in her high school's fencing club.

It was during the summer of her sophmore year that Arianna learned about the underground fighting going on. She overheard one of her classmates talking about it, and managed to convince him privately in exchange for her first kiss for the location and other information required to enter.

Sneaking out of the palace the first time proved the hardest thing she had ever done in her life, yet she somehow knew that everything would be fine.

She made her way to the poorer side of the city, although what passed for a ghetto in Monaco would be considered a middle-class neighborhood in poorer parts of the world.

Dressed in a hooded jacket and a pair of her brother's jeans, she somehow managed to obscure her identity enough so that no one recognized her.

Bribing her way into the building, Arianna took a seat towards the back and spent half the night just watching the fights; there was only limited organization to the bouts, but money was changing hands furiously.

Later in the evening, a call went out for anyone in the audience to come down and challenge the ring holder. Arianna honestly did not remember the trip down the steps and up to the producer, nor what she said to the man, but she soon found herself standing across from a burly Russian man who was naked from the waist up, with arms the size of tree trunks. She knew that she would be in trouble if he hit her, and so resolved to prevent that from happening.

As she gathered her mental resolve, she was shocked to see herself garbed in the armor of a Roman legionaire. Her shock, however, was short lived, as the bell was rung and the bout began...

What happened next would be told in whispered breath as near legend among those in the know of such underground fights: a 98 lb. girl beat the ever-loving piss out of a 350 lb. bear of a man, in well under a minute. The man never even landed a blow on her.

The damage was so severe that the champion would have to spend near a month recovering from the beating, though surprisingly nothing was broken, aside from the man's nose.

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For her part, Arianna had never felt anything like what she felt in that moment: the feeling of primal joy that came with overcoming an foe, and the dark pride that came with the complete domination of her opponent.

Arianna was in love, but not with any one person; Arianna was deeply in love with that feeling.

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For the next two years, Arianna spent nearly every evening at the fighting pit (which changed locations several times throughout the years). Each night, she would show up and compete in a couple of fights before leaving. She would take the money from the fight and then wait outside for her opponent and give it to the man, on the condition that he not breathe a word of this generousity.

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What brought her happy times, such as they were, to an end was the night the challenger came; this was also the night that the promoter closed down the fighting pits entirely.

The "man" was of average height and build, but when Arianna stepped into the ring, he said something to her that chilled her to the bone:

"Nice armor."

You see, no one she had fought had ever noticed her armor, and she had started to think that it was just a hallucination brought on by her mind. Yet this man's simple words shocked her to her core: Here was someone who could see her hallucinations too.

Arianna was not allowed to ponder this for long, however, as the battle began. The two were exceptionally evenly matched; neither could land a hit on the other. The were truly matched when it came to defense, and neither's offense was up to par when it came to bypassing their opponent's defense.

For the spectators, this was a legendary bout: the young blonde haired girl that had been undefeated was sparring with a man that none knew or had even seen enter.

As the fight continued, neither side showed any signs of fatigue; if anything their movements grew faster, until those watching could not even follow their attacks.

Then the tipping point came; Arianna managed to grab ahold of the man's lapel, and she used her strength and momentum to chuck him against the far wall.

A cheer rose up, as the presumed status quo returned to the room: Arianna would defeat this man, and all would be right with the world.

The man, however, had different ideas.

Snatching the leg of a woman spectator who wandered too close, she was pulled to the ground by an almost lazy sweep of the man's arm. She landed with a rather sickening thud; the sound that only came from flesh and bone meeting concrete and then losing that battle. Whether the woman was alive or not mattered not, because within the blink of an eye, the man was upon her, his sharpened fangs embedded in her neck, draining the woman dry; with a horrible scream and a few kicks, she left the mortal coil.

The man stood and lunged at her. As he did, the crowd panicked and fled screaming. For Arianna, time seemed to crystalize, and as the creature came flying in, it hung for a moment in the air, suspended. A voice that came from no direction she could pinpoint commanded "Draw me or die!" and she instinctively knew that it was the sword which hung from her hip.

As her hand rested on the hilt, she realized that it was the same sword that she had seen in the western wing of the palace; the same one she had cut herself on; the same one that had shown her the dream.

"DRAW ME!" the disembodied voice commanded, and this time Arianna responded.

As she drew, the runes that ran along the blade flaired to life with a bright white light, and time returned to it's normal pace. The creature completed the arc of it's leap, but Arianna's new blade was there, waiting for it to land; the force of it's leap mean that it's entire body was impaled upon the sword that Arianna simply held aloft. The look on the vampire's face was one of confusion, as if he couldn't believe what had just happened. Arianna tilted her blade, and the man's corpse crumpled to the ground at her feet. With the reflexive flick of her blade, the man's head was separated from his body.

With it's death, the creature's body crumpled to ash, leaving nothing of note behind.

Arianna then collapsed to her knees as raw knowledge was poured into her brain; knowledge of the veil, and her bloodlines (yes, the knowledge told her, she possessed multiple bloodlines, rare though it was), and how to control her abilities.

As would anyone who had experienced something similar, Arianna collapsed to her side and then proceeded to vomit up the contents of her stomach onto the floor before promptly passing out.

When she awoke, it was late into the evening and she was still lying on the floor of the warehouse. Rising shakily to her feet, she turned and fled into the night; fled towards home, and the safety of it's walls.

She was not, however, afraid of what had happened; she was afraid of being caught by her father.

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After the battle with the creature, Arianna's natural curiousity about the thing that she had fought quickly turned into a passion for mythology. She would voraciously read anything on the subject that she could find, and would then go out of her way to look for more.

She scanned catalogs from book vendors looking for works she had not collected yet, and would spend her allowance purchasing such titles, which she would quickly add to her growing library of books.

While by no means a genius, Arianna still managed to graduate high school with a solid 3.5 gpa, and a good pick of colleges to choose from. After weighing her options, she chose a college in the United States to attend, in the state of Maine. It had one of the best programs in the world on comparative religion, and Arianna had decided that this was what she wanted to study.

It took some convincing, but eventually her father allowed her to attend, as long as she was willing to take a private jet with her, so that she could return home on long weekends to visit, and that she do everything within her power to keep her identity a secret. Agreeing, Arianna submitted her application, and after about a month's time, she received her acceptance letter.

Her father simply wrote a check, and then saw her off to her college. She was allowed to stay in the small condo that her father purchased for her, which was within walking distance of campus. She enrolled in classes, and began the next chapter of her life.

Arianna is an attractive young woman, standing nearly 6' tall and weighing slightly under 160 lbs, with white-blonde hair, ice blue eyes, and skin tanned from days spent under the mediterranean sun. She has a lean build honed from years of physical activity, and although she is muscular, she is more panther than bear.

Years of personal combat have given her an intensely focused stare, which some people can find unnerving about her.

Arianna tends to dress in typical clothing worn by the students around her, as she does her best not to stand out among the other young women on campus.

She speaks English extremely well, yet she has a French accent that has led some people to speculate that she is from France. She has not bothered to dissuade those people of such ideas.

When she is under the effects of mage armor, to those whose vision is empowered to pierce the veil, she is garbed in Lorica Segmentata, the armor of the Roman Legionnaires, complete with the iconic helm of a Centurion.

Her summoned blade is an officer's gladius made of shining steel, angelic script flowing down the blade.