| Race | Human |
| Splat | Ghoul |
| Concept | Police Detective |
Physical Description
Blonde hair and light brown eyes, but otherwise unremarkable looking.
Personality
A by the book, no-nonense kind of cop, the kind that doesn't give or ask for
favors readily. Even in Chicago, she never made a point of bringing up
family connections, and rarely asked for help.
Story
Hope Zagorski was born and raised in Chicago, the youngest girl of her
parent's nine children. After graduating college with a major in Criminal
Justice (courtesy of a Police Scholarship fund), Hope joined the Police
Academy in hopes of joining the 'family business' and becoming a 4th
Generation Chicago Police Officer. When she graduated, Hope was assigned to
the 18th Precinct, just like the rest of her family, despite the protests of
her mother, who wanted her to get married and have kids like her older
sisters. She was a good beat cop, got good reviews from her superiors, and
passed the Detective's exam on the first try.
But that's when the trouble started. She was assigned to partner with a
grizzled old veteran of the force, and within three months of her
assignment, he was dead of a heart attack. And the sad part was, that he was
only three months away from retiring on full pension. Hope was soon
assigned to another partner, but six months later, he went out on disability
after taking a perp's bullet in the leg. While Hope was at the 18th, she had
five partners in two years, and something bad always happened to them.
People started saying that maybe she was a jinx. They called her "Hopeless"
and jokingly told her partners to make sure they had life insurance. Someone even started a rumor that they'd eaten lunch with her and wound up
getting in an accident. Officers wouldn't work with her, they wouldn't talk
to her, and that was bad for the precinct. Hope got an assignment working
undercover, but kept it quiet, telling her mother she'd been assigned to
desk duty.
Encouraged by Hope's reversal of fortune, her mother tried to fix her up
with several eligible bachelors until one, the son of one of her longtime
friends, was able to win her over. Three months after they met, Anthony
Joseph Scarpetti asked Hope to marry him. Hope accepted, but pushed hard for
a long engagement, setting a date over a year away because she wanted to get
married at the parish church. Or at least, that was her story.
Three months later, Hope broke off the engagement, much to her mother's
dismay. Her mother tried to intervene by lending Anthony the key to Hope's
apartment. Hope was not happy to see him waiting for her, and ran out
instead of tossing him out or simply shooting him. She was furious at her
mother, and refused to speak to her for a time. Her siblings started
getting involved in the dispute, taking one side or the other. Anthony was
still doggedly pursuing her, showing up at odd moments, sending her flowers,
and calling her. After changing her home number for the third time, Hope
decided then and there that it had to end, and the only way to do it was to
leave Chicago.
She'd heard Gotham was hiring detectives, and between her glowing reviews
and her 'minority status' she easily won a job, and was assigned to the 13th
Precinct.
It was okay for a short while. Unfortunately, she learned fast that many
Gotham cops are corrupt, and her new partner was worse than most. Internal
Affairs investigated both of them; her partner was arrested and stripped of
his badge, while Hope was let off without so much as a reprimand because IA
determined that Hope knew nothing about her partner's illegal activities.
Other cops started talking though. Someone talked to their cop buddy in
Chicago, and found out about Hope's sordid bad-luck tale. The guy spilled
the beans, and Hope became persona non grata. Again. This time, she pulled
desk duty instead of undercover work.
But the brass intervened, and partnered Hope with Detective Cody Brannigan.
Scuttlebutt told Hope that nobody wanted to work with him either. Hope
figures the brass gave her the assignment figuring that misery loves
company.....
Since being partnered with the obsessed detective, a man not unfamiliar with
losing partners himself, Hope came into contact with some of the unnatural
denizens of Gotham. Once exposed to the truth about the Undead through a
confrontation with Tzincoatl in the basement of Gotham Police HQ, Hope was
contacted by a man named Leon Wolf and through him she was brought into the
retinue of Dusk Industries and its Brujah owners.