Keziah was not always known as Keziah. It is a name that she adopted in 1347, after one hundred and sixty nine years as a vampire.

Vampires in Keziah's world inherit their benefits and weaknesses from their sire. Superhuman strength, speed, and durability are the basic benefits; while an inability to go in the sun, skin burning upon contact with religious iconography, and the fatality of a wooden stake through the heart and beheading are common weaknesses. And of course, all vampires feel an urge to feed on the life-force of the truly living -- for most vampires, this translates into a thirst for blood.

However, as vampires have diversified and come into contact with witches, fae, lycanthropes, and other creatures, they have changed. Some have gained boons against being harmed by certain kinds of attack, some have changed to feed directly on life-force energy rather than through the medium of blood, and a thousand other small differences. Witches will retain their magical abilities even after being turned, and vampires who were dhampirs (half-human, half-vampire offspring) to start with are stronger than average. Certain notable or long-lasting vampire lines have organized themselves into Houses, and knowing which House a vampire hails from can be a clue into the specific details of their strain of vampirism.

When she was turned in 1178, she was 22 years old and known by the name Ruqayyah. Her sire, a woman named Ibtihaj, had befriended her while she was alive. At this time, they have a generalized weakness to religious iconography and a weakness to sunlight that manifests itself in severe burns to the skin following exposure.

In the early years among her first House, Ruqayyah eventually comes to be referred to by the kunya Umm Shafaqat, a name meaning "mother of compassion".

It was likely this compassion that drove Ruqayyah in 1347 -- following the death of a Christian child, the local Jewish community was blamed, and the Christian majority was going to attack in revenge. Instead, Ruqayyah allowed herself to be seen feeding in order to shift the blame to herself. Vampire hunters were called in. But she was able to escape from them into the sunlight, after finding out that it no longer burned her. (Further, while Christian religious iconography no longer harms her, certain Jewish religious items will sting or sear her skin when handled.) After this, she takes on the name Keziah.

The vampires she sires afterward, starting with Giuseppe Poggio in 1350, inherit her sun resistance, as well as the specific weakness to Jewish religious iconography. Keziah values coexistence with the human majority and dislikes those vampires who don't have the control to leave their prey alive after a feeding. She does not believe in any kind of inherent superiority of vampires over other forms of life, knowing that they are far more dependent on the truly alive such as humans than most vampires would like to admit. She takes care when selecting who to turn, though she can be swayed by pleas from her vampire children. Anyone who doesn't meet her standards of self control will eventually be... removed from the House.