Elizabeth Miranda Montgomery

Ms. Montgomery is well known for being a socialite, heiress, and the Chairwoman of the Board of the formidable Montgomery Organization, well known among businessmen and politicians for its sprawling real estate and investment interests. If you want to do business, you'll need to tangle with the Montgomery's at some point... or one of their agents, at the very least. Eliza has come off strong from an attempt on her life by some upstart, and has re-branded herself after a humiliating smear campaign in the press. The only issue seems to be that Eliza seems colder, sharper, and all-around terrifying.

Personal History
The Montgomery family has been in Hamilton since the founding, having moved from Salem to pursue the new opportunities that the coastal city provided. They made their start in shipping, and this proved advantageous during Prohibition where they were able to smuggle vast amounts of alcohol using their fleet and warehouses. The money and connections made from their illegal dealings allowed them to begin to invest in real estate among other things… mostly legitimate businesses, yet there have been some allegations that the Montgomery’s had ties to crime lords even after Prohibition. For now, the Montgomery family’s chief business concerns are its real estate and investment firms, with shipping as a tertiary interest compared to the olden days.

As for Eliza, she was the darling of the Montgomery family. Beautiful, intelligent, and driven to be a success, she was everything her parents could have wanted… a shame that she was the baby of the family. It was clear that when the family business was concerned, Samuel would take charge… which was unfortunate, as Samuel was not a particularly good businessman. As for dear Eliza, her father was old fashioned and she was going to be married off to the heir of another wealthy family, a way to merge the businesses and the families. Unfortunately for her dear father, he was unable to see that day. He died in a terrible car accident along with Eliza’s mother, and the shareholders **freaked**. Their stock plummeted, the merger was called off, and Eliza could see their life unraveling at the seams. Samuel could not handle the pressure and took to drinking and humiliated himself and the family, accusing rival families of killing his father. He was particularly adamant about it being the McLean’s, the same family her father wanted her to marry into. Eliza did her best to do damage control, gathering shares in the company to try and get more of an assertive position in the business. It was working well for a time…

The Montgomery Organization was on the track to a comeback, but then Samuel began to get paranoid. He thought that his assistants were spying on him, no one ever lasted longer than a week, the lawsuits started again… and the Board of Directors decided that Samuel would need to be removed. Eliza went to him with a generous offer to buy him out, and instead of taking it… he strangled her. By the time he snapped out of it, she was barely conscious, and he went right to his office and put one in his skull. Eliza was left on the floor, weak and practically on death’s doorstep… and that’s when Gloriana saw her chance.

What happened next was the consolidation of shares in the company, the shares that were suddenly vacated from her brother suddenly transferred to her, giving her the controlling stake in the company. As the CEO and Chairwoman of the Board of Directors, she began to expand the business. The city of Hamilton was certainly profitable, and less saturated with companies like her own, so she began to buy out competitors. It was costly, but soon enough, the Montgomery name was back out there. There was the bankrupt luxury department store they’d bought out and renovated into a particularly trendy nightclub on the east side, the construction firms that got absorbed into the corporate structure just to try and keep themselves from getting screwed by the unions, and there was a new development in the old industrial park on the west side of the city. Old factories were getting torn down and replaced with offices, warehouses, perhaps even some trendy nightclubs or stores. With any luck, they might very well get Amazon interested in plopping down there. Some executives did threaten to leave when they learned their pay was getting cut so more money could be funneled into the business itself, but a sit-down with the Chairwoman herself quickly made them change their mind.

But even a woman as talented as Eliza with a demon at her core couldn’t do everything by herself, she needed people that she could rely on. She needed people that she knew weren’t going to fuck her over the second market speculators accused her of running her company into the ground by trying to expand so soon after a ‘tragedy’. Speaking of which, her parent’s and brother’s life insurance certainly helped fuel some of these new changes… and maybe helped acquire some stylistic necessities. She has two highly competent men bound to her, Dimitri Melnikov and Gareth Wright. The former is from Russia, and was one of the many oligarchs that exploited the corruption found in the new capitalist government and economy after the fall of the Soviet Union. He remains a rather powerful man in both Russia and the United States, more so in Russia, and was actually a very good friend to her father before he passed. He is now the COO of the Montgomery Organization and serves as Eliza’s right hand, easily able to read people and pick out surefire investments. He also serves on the Board of Directors, as he has invested quite a bit of capital into the Montgomery Organization.. As for Gareth, he is a more recent hire. He is her full-time bodyguard and chauffeur, yet she doesn’t particularly know too much about him personally. She knows he once served in a private military company and after the Iraq War went tits up, he came back to the states to join up with a corporate security team.. In addition to being her bodyguard, he also serves as the head of security for Montgomery Tower, a tall glittering skyscraper downtown that serves as the main office of her company.

Gloriana reigned supreme for a time but when people succeed, there is always the chance that someone will crave what you have to the point of violence. Fantasia was attacked, the Baroness left bleeding on the ground for hours… the heart of the freehold attempted to keep her alive as nightmares threatened to consume her, but something slipped by. Gloriana found herself being embraced, a brilliant being of light appeared to her and told her that everything would be fine so long as she was permitted to take control. Gloriana had grown weary of politics, of the fey nonsense of the world… and thus Celestine was reborn.

The Herald of the Morning Star
Celestine was born into the Namaru, the House of the Dawn and for a great deal of time, she served as a manager for various projects in heaven. In particular, she had the honor of working as part of a team under Lucifer, the most powerful and favored of the Archangels. Everything was going wonderfully, the humans proved to be fascinating. The Garden of Eden was a paradise for them, designed to be a world in which they could live in harmony with nature, to never want for anything… there was a snag with Lilith, who did not seem to love Adam. This inauspicious pairing would prove to be problematic as she was sent out to the world beyond Eden.

Their plans were further soiled when Ahrimal received a vision, explaining that there was a catastrophe that would undo all of their hard work and even jeopardize the future of mankind. God, as usual, decided that it was inconsequential or was possibly even a part of His Ineffable Plan, but trying to get an answer out of Him is pointless. That was when Lucifer came to them and asked ‘Who among you are willing to intervene on behalf of the creatures we love?’ Celestine responded without hesitation, taking Lucifer’s side even as the Archangel Michael stood to bar their path. Lucifer, stronger than the Golden Boy, struck him down and caused him to flee… the curses that Michael spouted off were originally not taken very seriously. The words of a sore loser and a tattletale, surely of no consequence.

When the Fallen, as the Loyalists began to call them, came down to the humans, they rallied to us. Only a few remained loyal to God, and this inspired the Fallen’s cause. They knew they were in the right if this was their response. Eden fell with a mighty blow from God and the Fallen quickly took to sheltering the humans. It was during that time that Celestine’s Visage began to change, it was not too different from those of Bel, yet her abilities changed. Her voice could be clearly heard across battlefields, she could inspire humans by the legion with her words… but more importantly, she could easily see through mortals or Elohim attempting to deceive her. It became her duty to serve as a loyalty inspector, everyone was giving so much to the cause that traitors or spies could not be tolerated. One day she uncovered a plot to assassinate their Morning Star in order to demoralize them, foiling it by forcing the ringleader to reveal his true nature. She proved her worth once again, and she never felt more valued when Lucifer thanked her for her good work. He had that effect on people, his natural charisma was without compare. She adored him; she would do anything for him… so many of the Fallen would.

The war had no casualties until a human ruined everything. Two brothers took opposite sides in the War in Heaven, one sided with God and the Elohim while the other sided with the Fallen. This man, Caine, killed his brother to show his love for God after the latter gave his brother a blessing, and God did not appreciate the gesture. This was the first act of murder, a cruelty born of hatred and desire… and everything fell apart. The TRUE War had begun, as had Lucifer’s Great Experiment. The Fallen figured that if they could awaken Humanity’s true potential, they could finally turn the tide against God and His loyalist filth. Celestine became a ruthless inspector, ordering the indoctrination of those that did not embrace the Morning Star willingly… and if that failed, she ordered their extermination. Nothing could imperil His Great Experiment; nothing could be allowed to smother Humanity in its crib. She would not allow it.

Unfortunately for the Fallen, some believed that Humanity might turn on their Fallen progenitors, that they may one day decide they should be the Masters. Celestine was there in Lucifer’s citadel when the Nephilim marched forward and watched with awe as the Morning Star slaughtered them. She was furious, and everything began to come undone… the prophecy made before was coming true, and it was driving her to a breaking point. The loyalists struck at their weakest moment, as a member of the Qingu, she was a tactician and they kept them at bay for forty days and forty nights. Alas, the stronghold was breached, and she was restrained and forced to watch as that traitor Michael ambushed her Lord and bound him with chains. The war was over…

God banished them to the Abyss, a place of nothingness and darkness… they could talk to one another, but there was nothing to be done. They could plan all they liked, but escape seemed impossible. Eons passed, and they figured out that Lucifer was not there with them. Wherever he was, he wasn’t in the Abyss. The whisperings and rumblings began, ‘Traitor’ they called him, some even said they were wrong for siding with him, and Celestine was furious. She became one of the angry voices in the void, shouting about one day how they would get even with God for having done this to them. The Cryptics did make sense to her, they proposed that if God was omniscient he would have seen all this coming and that the rebellion was part of the Ineffable Plan. Despite this, Celestine didn’t particularly care if it was or not… she needed to do something, Lucifer would be able to figure out what they should do next. But she did him no good down in the depths, she rallied as much of her energy as she could to provide a brief flicker of sanity, a moment of clarity to see that there was a little pinprick of light beyond the Abyss. She rushed toward it, coming to consciousness in a body that certainly wasn’t her own… and now, now she needed to figure out what to do next.

Personality
Eliza and Celestine possess the ruthless cunning and charming demeanor necessary to do what must be done both for the bottom line and her own self-interest. She’s the kind of gal that took Machiavelli to heart, believing that one should always strive to never be hated if possible… but in the event you cannot be loved, you must cultivate the fear of others. It doesn’t matter if they hate you if they’re too scared interfere with your plans. Regardless, she knows that to earn the loyalty of those under her, she must make it apparent that their services are valued. This is punctuated in her good treatment of subordinates… the ones that provide exemplary service, that is.

She has two faces, embodying the concept of honne and tatemae... a curious Japanese custom that she's decided to cultivate. She knows that to succeed, she cannot be arrogant and she must play by the rules. When you work for the Legion, your tatemae must be that of civility, humility, and patience. You must show that you are devoted to the team, not just to yourself. All that matters is the Morning Star's vision, she'll abide by nothing less when the chips are down to it.

Her honne, her “true sound” is much different.

At her core, Eliza was a selfish creature and one that sought luxury and power. She remains a hedonist, a woman that wants to enjoy herself and revel in her own successes. She knows that people will underestimate her, and she lets that happen to a point... usually right before she suddenly reveals that she was in control all along. There’s no harm in letting people think she isn’t a threat… so long as she knows they can’t do anything to her. She knows she’ll need to look out for herself, and if someone proves to be a threat, they just have to go.

Pragmatism is the name of the game, do what you must because you have to.

It’s not personal. It’s just business, hun.

Appearance
Eliza is an extremely beautiful Caucasian female with a voluptuous body, long blonde hair which reaches down to her waist, broad shoulders, blue eyes and tends to wear cosmetics. She often wears tailored suits in a variety of colors, jewel-tone wiggle dresses that look as though she's come out of an episode of Mad Men, or elaborate gowns that make Galadriel from Lord of the Rings look under-dressed, although the last are usually reserved for very formal occasions.

When Celestine rears her head, Eliza is immediately surrounded by incredibly bright light, blinding people before allowing them to experience her at her full majesty. It is as though she's taller than anyone in the room, her lordly mien and booming voice demanding that the peons around her quickly silence themselves before she commands them to swallow their tongues. Regardless of what she is wearing at the time, she looks as though she's in a fantasy queen's regalia complete with a crown of stars, a high collared cape, and a luxurious gown that glows with the same radiance as the aura around her.

The Hellfire Club formerly known as "Fantasia"
The Hellfire Club is divided among three floors: the VIP floor is at the top, the ground floor is for general admission, and the basement is for the special clients that do not particularly fit in with the others… i.e., most often demons and people she does not want to meet in her office or in the VIP booths where the public might see them together. Celestine thought ‘The Hellfire Club’ was a bit on the nose, but the name was just too amusing for her to pass up. From what people know about it, VIPs are given special invitations signed by Eliza Montgomery herself and serve as ‘membership cards’ yet said invitations can be revoked at any time should Eliza decide the person doesn’t suit the image of the club. It serves as a neutral ground of sorts for the most part, however that only stands for the VIP and ground floors. The bottom floor allows for scheming and perhaps more shady deals, but only with the express permission of the owner... who may also be entitled to a cut of the action if it might prove profitable.