Her mother only stepped up to the plate once Vera's father died. That was probably the worst day of her life. She remembers it so clearly: being pulled out of class one morning and being told that her dad got into a fatal car accident on the way to work. At least she got to say goodbye before he left. But she wished - she still wishes - that she got to say just a little more.
The following years weren't any kinder. Now living in a mobile home, her mother cared little about Vera's well-being and was really only around for the meager monetary benefits. It was a very volatile environment - lots of verbal and sometimes physical abuse being hurled around as Vera grew up and began acting out. Though she put on a tough exterior, inside she felt isolated from her peers and unlovable, a feeling that would continue well into adulthood.
After purchasing a used laptop (with money gained from dubious sources...) she quickly discovered online communities centered around sharing violent and explicit media. Seeing someone else take the pain for once almost felt cathartic, and that feeling was highly addicting. It was around this time that she discovered her affinity for gambling, being particularly good at online poker. If she wasn't absorbed in whatever new shock video had popped up that week, she was scrapping together enough money from shady gambling sites to move out.
With her life nearly entirely revolving around a cycle of violence, her self-destructive tendencies and anger issues worsened, as did her relationship with her mother. It seemed like the older Vera got, the more vitriolic her mother became. She made sure to remind Vera how much of a burden she was becoming, how she was worthless, a living, breathing bad luck charm. The fight that occurred the night before before Vera finally left was one of their worst ones yet, involving lots of broken dishes and some not-very-nice words said about her father. She hasn't spoken to her mother since then.
Vera kept to herself after that, now situated in the Levite Towers apartment complex located within the 7th ward of West Levite. It wasn't much cleaner or nicer than her previous dwellings, but she really couldn't complain. Life was much quieter now. Nobody yelled at her if she came home late, or hit her, or kept her awake by breaking things. Nobody cared about her at all. And she preferred it that way.
But then... it all started with her and three others winning a free dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, only for them to find the owner lying dead in the kitchen. All sense of normalcy was thrown out the window in the following months as the four of them unwillingly became more involved in the dark history of the city and the ancient horrors it was built on top of.
Out of all of them, Vera seemed to embrace this chaos the most... it wasn't like she had anything better to do.
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