Sister Elsie Toshiro

It is the night-black Massachusetts legendry which packs the really macabre ‘kick’… for certainly, no one can deny the existence of a profoundly morbid streak in the Puritan imagination. The very pre-ponderance of passionately pious men in the colony was virtually an assurance of unnatural crime; insomuch as psychology now proves the religious instinct to be a form of transmuted eroticism precisely parallel to the transmutations in other directions which respectively produce such things as sadism, hallucination, melancholia, and other mental morbidities. Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.
—H.P. Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard, 4 October 1930

Sister Eloise Toshiro

Clan: Malkavian
Affiliation: Byzantium Coven
Role: Spy, assassin, dominatrix

Sister Elsie is a Malkavian dominatrix of the Dacian lineage, a rare bloodline capable of absorbing the memories, personality traits, and physical characteristics of their victims. This ability gives Sister Elsie’s physical appearance a fluidity that wanders between the poles of her Franco-Japanese parentage. Some remember Sister Elsie as a slight Japanese woman with a mischievous giggle; others describe her as a haughty French vixen with a smoldering voice. She cannot control these alterations—her features change gradually to reflect the fantasies of her lovers and victims. Only her mesmerizing gaze remains constant. Elsie’s eyes bore directly into the soul of her target, reading secrets and exposing pretenses without revealing a flicker of her own hidden heart.

History

The daughter of a former Jesuit from Tokyo and a Québécoise French teacher, Eloise Jeanette Toshiro began life in a home filled with love and adoration. Unfortunately, her parents had no relations and very few friends, and after they were killed by a drunk driver in 1959, little Elsie was sent to an orphanage in Montreal. Prone to vivid dreams and wild flights of fancy involving imaginary friends, Elsie began experiencing powerful visions of Jesus, and eventually joined the Sisters of Charity of the Hôpital Général.

Elsie’s life as a Grey Nun was far from ideal, and as her visions of Jesus took an erotic turn, she actively fantasized about her habit-clad sisters and the handsome young priests of Montreal. For Elsie, everything around her glowed with a subversive sexual aura—Jesus splayed on His cross, the lugubrious saints gesturing to their open-lipped wounds, Mary Magdalene washing the savior’s pale feet with her harlot’s hair… In 1967 Sister Elsie confessed her blasphemous thoughts to a hippie priest named Father Honoré Martel. This confidence led to a series of clandestine meetings in which confessions became fantasies, and fantasies became turn-ons. Soon Elsie was purchasing lingerie to wear under her habit, and Father Martel was presenting her with bottles of communion wine, perfectly-rolled joints, and sex toys designed to “relieve and purify” her desires. While there was frequent show-and-tell and occasionally light masturbation, the two had yet to physically touch.

Unbeknownst to the illicit couple, their trysts had attracted the attention of Gustavo Carnot, a Malkavian circus freak known as “Le Nain.” Accustomed to hiding in confessionals and feeding from devout women as they poured forth their sins to an unsuspecting priest, the dwarf came across one of their “confessions” when lurking in a nearby booth. He began following them whenever he could, delighted by their deepening spiral of depravity. One night Father Martel brought Sister Elsie to a church that had been recently closed for renovation. Leading her to a room where a large crucifix was being restored, he placed a Coleman lantern on the table and nodded to the horizontal figure, elevated on sawhorses and surrounded by carpenter’s tools. The alluringly life-sized Jesus had been sanded down and repainted, and his fresh eyes gazed soulfully upwards. Administering a communion of wine and LSD-laced wafers, Father Martel watched as his paramour lifted her tunic, exposing black lace stockings and the edge of a leather corset. Sister Elsie mounted the wooden savior as Father Martel read a sermon from the Book of Anaïs Nin. Slowly shedding his vestments, he finally gathered the nerve to touch the object of his desire as she grinded and rocked her way to climax.

Watching from the shadows, their secret admirer could no longer resist. Le Nain struck, dazzling the couple with Dementation and Embracing them as they formed a bloody ménage à trois with the effigy of Jesus. Le Nain dragged his new progeny up the tower stairs and chained them to the belfry wall. Introducing himself as Quasimodo, he announced that he was sent by God as punishment for their sins. With Montreal’s lights twinkling in the distance, the dwarf removed a struggling lamb from a burlap sack and presented their first “unholy communion.” The starving pair ripped the lamb apart with their hands, lapping its blood from each other’s bodies and howling with Dementation.

If the sadistic dwarf was looking for an extended holiday, he was sorely disappointed. Father Martel never recovered from Dementation, and roused himself at noon. He chewed off his own hand to escape the shackles, then leapt from the belfry to escape his fate. As the sunlight covered his broken body with flames, he died believing he had surely gone to hell. Sister Elsie, on the other hand, merely laughed at the dwarf’s pretentions. Le Nain had grossly misjudged her—she was not some corrupted nun eager to flagellate herself with guilt. Barley registering the death of her lover, Elsie Toshiro found the dwarf an ideal replacement, revealing a streak of cruelty that transcended the Malkavian’s own and chirping in French, “If God wanted me punished, why would He have presented me with such a wretched object of debasement as yourself?” After a single week with his new progeny, Le Nain found himself exhausted, and realized that Elsie might just be corrupting him. Gustavo Carnot released Elsie only a month after her creation, pointing her in the direction of the Montreal Sabbat and fleeing the sound of her icy laughter.

Under Sabbat tutelage, Sister Elsie refined her cruelty into a brilliant sadism. Nothing was too shocking or blasphemous, and she reveled in seduction, corruption, and degradation. Her Malkavian blood made her fantasies even more vivid, and she began to actually see what she wanted to see, as if the world were choreographed in Technicolor solely for her amusement. She discovered that she could access the memories of the humans she fed upon, and after time, she learned to selectively absorb their personality traits as well. By the time her first decade as a Malkavian had passed, her appearance had begun to fluctuate. Whenever Elsie enjoyed a sustained source of human blood, her flesh gradually tuned itself to resonate with her victim’s innermost desires. Strangely, these changes were limited by her own human heritage, as if Elsie were expressing features drawn from a ghostly spectrum of nonexistent and unrealized sisters, the myriad possible daughters of her parents’ distant union.

Most of the Sabbat believed that Sister Elsie was manifesting a novel strain of Vicissitude. Taken to meet Paramándala Voin, La Reina Bruja took one taste of Elsie’s blood and spat, “¡Esta cosa no es Tzimisce! Ella es una perra de los Dacios.” The Montreal Sabbat launched a search for Elsie’s Sire, but Gustavo Carnot was already beyond their reach. Two summers prior, Le Nain had angered a Ravnos fortuneteller outside of Saint-Jérôme. The gypsy beheaded the spiteful dwarf and dumped his body in Lac Écho.

In 1986, Venus and Orchid met Sister Elsie at a Saturnalia in Québec City. Elsie had become bored by Montreal, and requested to accompany the Daeva a back to New York. After she proved her worth blackmailing a human congressman and assassinating a Boston Ventrue, Sister Elsie Toshiro became the first Malkavian to join the Byzantium Coven.

Current Role

Too unstable to be entrusted to a leadership position, Sister Elsie serves the Sabbat as a unique hybrid of spy, assassin, and torturer. Although her Byzantium attire is an outrageous combination of religious habit and fetishwear, when the need arises Sister Elsie can unfasten the stays and fishnet stockings, forgo the peekaboo tunic, and set aside the patent leather cornette to appear eminently presentable. She is an expert in the seduction and manipulation of authority figures—executives, generals, judges, bishops, and even once a mother superior. While most capable Cainites could get their way through Presence or Domination, Sister Elsie rarely resorts to supernatural methods, and her ability to become the “ideal woman” of her target’s imagination is paralleled only by an Assamite’s power to earn the total trust of his eventual victim. The information and special favors Elsie acquires through these patient, gradual “envelopments” are often more reliable and sustainable than those gained through magical coercion. Of course, there’s also extortion, blackmail, and torture; and it’s not uncommon for one of Elsie’s targets to commit suicide after she’s experienced a “change of affections.” This faculty for convincing emotional deception followed by utter blankness unnerves even Cainites, who wonder whether Elsie even possesses the capacity for genuine emotion. Although she is unfailingly cordial and obedient, Sister Elsie has few friends in the coven, and Shakchunni and Buqat keep the Malkavian dominatrix under close surveillance.

Sources & Notes

The core of the Gotham Sabbat was first uploaded on 31 October 2000, but the Byzantium Coven was extensively revised during the August 2018 update. While sexy nuns are a staple in goth and fetish erotica, Sister Elsie was loosely inspired by my favorite movie, Ken Russell’s The Devils, which is still woefully unavailable—Criterion? Please?

Sister Elsie’s original appearance was inspired by the cover of a hentai manga called The Sex-Files. I tried to link to the cover itself, but after Googling some keywords, I prudently desisted! (For those who are curious, you can see the original NSFW image by clicking here.) The banner image of the smoking nun is a photograph by Marc Hom featuring the models Jessica Hart and Lydia Hearst. I found it on a Pinterest page about, what else, sexy nuns.

Author: Great Quail
Original Upload: 31 October 2000
Last Modified: 22 August 2018
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
PDF Version: [Coming Soon]