Sterling Kaplan

Name story:

Sterling was another name-generator gift, and I built the character’s association with silver/monochromatic colors around his name.

Character age:

30

Character gender:

Cis man

Offsite roleplay:

This doll's character is not available for offsite roleplay.

Sterling is the only member of Lulla-Bye’s band who isn’t a USA native. He hails from Liverpool, the birthplace of the Fab Four (though Sterling finds the Beatles to be just a bit overrated).

He and his twin sister Mia grew up with the constant rhythm of their seamstress mother’s sewing machine. The two would follow in her footsteps to pursue careers in fashion. They attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, where Mia began evolving her skills to a new level - she broke into the ability to twist clothes and magick together. She readily passed on her abilities to Sterling, though he struggled with learning magick more than she.

Perhaps it was for the best, because Mia’s abilities began to attract strangers to their apartment. They were a pair of men, usually clad in tasteful suits, though Sterling had caught sight of a shoulder harness hidden beneath one’s blazer. They made him uncomfortable, and he maintained as little contact with them as possible. Mia, however, seemed to have a new job with them.

She was unusually tight-lipped about what exactly it was they did, though she did brag about how much they liked her clothes and spells. Sterling kept quiet about his uneasiness - Mia was being paid a tidy sum for her work, and she seemed proud of it, plus she always came home when her work was done.

She came home right until the last job she ever took. Shortly after their graduation, Mia returned back to their apartment in the wee hours of the morning. She was quiet, so not to wake her brother, and silently took to bed where she bled to death from the gunshot wounds sustained on her stomach. She was found the next morning, and the following investigation eventually stalled to a cold case. Sterling survived in the awkward limbo of still living in Mia’s shadow, though she was no longer there to cast it.

He threw himself all the more forcefully into working magick through clothes. It was a way to remember her by, and perhaps a punishment for not keeping her safe. He practiced in secret, fearful of being led away by awful suits the way Mia had been.

Lulla-Bye gave him somewhere to run. Sterling first encountered the band backstage of one of the venues he worked for as a costume designer. He was several drinks in the hole and chatting up the guitarist from one of the opening acts. She was absolutely adorable and partial to vintage fashion, asked him for style tips, and somehow got him to promise to go thrifting around New York’s secondhand shops with the band. Several vintage band tees, a leather jacket, a pair of roller skates, a metallic silver tank top and a subsequent bar-hopping adventure later, Sterling was drunk with the band (again) and halfway through demonstrating how to enchant the bassist’s combat boots before he remembered that he’s nOT SUPPOSED TO BE SHOWING OFF.

Yet the band seemed entirely nonplussed by the situation. Rather, they seemed too comfortable with the idea of magick. In a suspiciously rehearsed-sounding conversation segway, the band explained that they liked to keep an eye on the occult community while touring, and heard about some ruckus in New York. They asked Sterling a few polite questions, asked about a few people around - and showed Sterling a photo of one of the suits Mia used to hang around.

Days later, Sterling packed his sewing machine and clothes into Lulla-Bye’s tour bus as their new manager and stylist. A sense of stagnancy seemed to fade from him as they left the city, onward to wherever their leads and gigs took them. And perhaps, to whomever Mia’s murderer was.

Sterling Kaplan

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