Post by FLICK on Oct 17, 2009 20:46:25 GMT -5
Name:
Altair De Vaux
Aliases:
Altair assumes a variety of identities when necessary; mostly, however, his name and the associated prestige create the effect he is looking for.
Age:
413
Race:
Fire Demon
Gender:
Male
Occupation/Class:
Noble
Orientation:
Heterosexual
Physical Description:
Altair’s appearance is as striking as his personality. He stands just below six foot, with broad shoulders and a well-muscled body. Despite his bulk, his motions are fluid and graceful, and he holds himself with poise and posture appropriate to his self-assumed nobility. His skin is pale, almost silvery in colour, in direct contrast to his hair. It is blue-black, falling dead-straight to the curve between his shoulder blades. His features are delicate, finely boned and patrician, giving him a haughty, sharp look. His eyes, however, are the most striking aspect of his look: they are a deep, unblinking gold, flecked with dark amber, and are unreadable unless they are flashing with anger. Despite his arresting appearance, his demonism is not outwardly apparent, two ivory fangs among the only signs of his demonic heritage.
He wears elegant, fine clothes of black and gold, his signature colours, in the noble fashion of Ecritetre. He is never without a plain gold band, worn like a wedding ring around the ring finger of his left hand and wears a fine gold chain around his neck.
Personality Description:
Cold, aloof, silent. Altair holds himself apart from people behind a carefully constructed, nigh impenetrable façade. He is reserved, quiet, and icy, but does not come off as slow: his birdlike eyes reveal cunning and intelligence, and he is as sharp as a blade. He pursues his own desires with little thought for honour or tradition, inserting himself into the Ecritetrean nobility to enjoy their life of luxury.
His demonic nature is brutal, violent and bloodthirsty, driven by lust for destruction. His calculating, silent nature seems at odds with this heritage; in truth, Altair attempts to curb his more primal, carnal desires. His anger is well controlled and he rarely snaps, but he holds grudges that endure like slow-burning flames. He is undeniably vicious, unnecessarily cruel, arbitrarily violent and driven by greed, but he hides his nature behind a mask of civility sophistication.
As a nobleman, he surrounds himself with people of mortal blood, but Altair holds himself apart from them. While holding his own secrets back, he seeks to learn as much about the minds and ways of men as possible, and understands the ways of men better, perhaps, than most of his blood. However, understanding is not to be mistaken for affection. Altair sees people of mortal blood as less ‘worthy’ than more powerful demons, and manipulates them shamelessly. Altair’s loyalty is devoted only to power – if he has the power to control lesser beings, he finds no reason that he should not.
Alignment:
Chaotic Evil. Although he tries to curb his more animalistic, primal urges, he lacks the personal code of honour, loyalty or tradition that defines Lawful Evil characters. Plus he’s a demon and shit.
History:
Born more than four hundred years ago to unknown parents, Altair’s first memory is of fire. Having been left alone on the doorstep of a middle-class family, the quiet, good-natured baby had been taken in. After little more than a day, his fire had first manifested himself – the house burnt down, and the baby was found alone, miraculously safe, amongst the ashes.
From there, Altair’s early years were a chain of Ecritetrean foundling homes, accidents and beatings. As a boy, he was silent and enigmatic, with golden eyes and raven hair, and despite his association with a string of blackmails, thefts and attacks on fellow waifs, the crimes were always notoriously difficult to pin down. Rooms caught fire spontaneously, buildings burnt down, and Altair moved on.
When Altair was deemed old enough, he was thrust out into the world, his latest carers glad to be rid of the strange boy. A wandering witch in the Gris Montagne revealed his heritage to him, and his next few years were spent in a concentrated effort to monopolise on his potential power. Several violent, dangerous accidents taught him the need for control, at least until his strength grew. Having been taught to read and write by those who had cared for him, he made the connection between knowledge and power swiftly, and spent the next several years of his life travelling Demia, reading on his heritage and the magic he was beginning to master.
We take up Altair’s story again when he first meets Vyncent Schwarz, perhaps three hundred years ago, in a Märmosian pub. He recognised his fellow demon swiftly, and the two began to travel with one another. Altair was fiercely admiring of the High Demon’s power – something he had drunk lightly of and had already begun to crave like the air he breathed. The demon’s black flames enthralled him, and the blade that drank souls seemed to sing to him in his sleep. The two parted ways – in flame – after Altair’s failed theft of Vyncent’s beloved Amor, the beginning of their long resentment. The subsequent village-burning was associated to the notorious Vyncent Schwarz, already ramping up his bounty, although Altair narrowly escaped capture.
His failure at the hands of his fellow demon incensed the young Altair, but what terrified him was the risk of losing everything he had fought so hard to gain after a mistake as simple as burning a village. Lacking the strength of Vyncent, he knew magic or physical strength could not protect him forever, and he set about building his prestige. Winning wealth in secret through a combination of blackmail, murder, forged inheritance and petty theft, Altair established himself quietly amongst the Ecritetrean nobility under the house of De Vaux.
Aloof, cold and quiet, the De Vaux family was always a mystery. He kept himself apart from the court of the Ecritetrean royalty in a country manor, and so it passed unnoticed that the same man ruled the house for over two hundred years. Over those years Altair devoted himself to power, the only true god in the violent world of mortals. He studied Arcane magic comprehensively, directing his now considerable resources to increasing his own might. He sated his demonic urges in secret – peasants would disappear in the night from the surrounding countryside, and particularly nosy footmen would mysteriously vanish. Wives were taken and disappeared quietly under the veil of silence that hung over the house – that is, until Marie arrived, the black sheep daughter of another nobleman who considered a marriage to the enigmatic Altair De Vaux a very lucky arrangement indeed for his deranged daughter.
Marie had a fascination with the occult, and, despite Altair’s efforts at secrecy, uncovered her husband’s demonic heritage. Enthralled by his horrific secret, she neglected to take the potion that he had prepared for her to prevent a potential pregnancy. Never one to take notice of a wife except as an object to relieve his lust, he didn’t notice his wife’s pregnancy until it was too late to abort without her own death, which would draw unwanted attention from her father and the court, as Marie was still quite young.
When Altair was 394, his half-breed daughter, Etoile, was born. He had resolved himself to kill the child and pass it off as a miscarriage, but something about the infant enthralled him – she had the same golden eyes, same black hair, even if her features were those of her mother. He remained in the country manor for the first three years of her life, fascinated by the enigma that she presented. The sight of her incited a protective burning within her, a painful need for closeness, that he had never experienced before. It was only the mistake of an unfortunate maid, touching the sleeping baby in the presence of her father, which brought to Altair’s attention the danger she posed. The maid was torn apart in the nursery, and Altair realised that it was no longer prudent to remain in the manor – his daughter, and his need to protect her, threatened the semblance of civilisation he created for himself.
Despite retiring to his town house, he could not help himself from returning to see the child – he felt a mix of love and revulsion for what she could make him feel. She bonded easily with her father, much more so than with her half-mad mother. Over time, he withdrew further and further from her – the more they bonded, the closer he came to being bound to her forever. By the age of six, he resigned himself to never seeing her again.
He heard the news of his burning manor dispassionately, realising that the danger Etoile posed him was intensified if she had inherited the dangerous gifts he had. Far better, then, not to associate with her; to let somebody else handle the problems she faced. It was a chance to remove her from his life altogether. She was sent to live with a cousin of her mother in the capital as Altair returned to the country, rebuilding his manor. He had kept the girl’s birth a secret, and through a combination of blackmail and bribery passed her off as the daughter of his mother’s cousin. He severed contact with them, and lost contact with his daughter, unaware of her progression from her new parents’ townhouse to L’Academie and eventually Le Couvert.
Despite this, he couldn’t cut her off from his mind – she grew up in a quiet, hidden corner of his mind, as secret to himself as to the rest of the world, a dancing girl that visited him in repeated dreams. Finally, Altair decided that her influence on him was already too great to ignore: he had no choice but to seek Etoile out again and bring her back to him.
Likes:
Wealth, power, blood, fire, gold, luxury, expensive clothes, statues, gardens, all the trappings of wealth or power.
Dislikes:
Water (well duh), rain, cold, snow, ‘roughing it’, dirt, the lower class, the upper class, the classes in between, signs of weakness.
Strengths:
Altair has several inborn strengths. As a demon, he has heightened strength, speed and agility, as well as senses beyond those of mortals. Although he is not as fast as some of his demon kin, he is powerful and bulky, and his strength is among one of his best attributes. He also has an inborn summoning and control of fire, although this is not as developed as it could be. He has also studied Arcane magic comprehensively.
Weaknesses:
Altair’s nature is, ultimately, conflicted: despite his constructed facade of sophistication, he falls prey to demonic lusts as often as others of his kin, and devotes energy to a struggle to control these traits (which he sees as weaknesses) that could be better spent on other pursuits. In this, he also lacks the single-mindedness of many demons and has a tendency to hesitate before he acts. This is, at least in part, due to his relative youngness (at least for a demon), and the fact that he was never trained – Altair finds it difficult to control his inner demon, and struggles against his inclination to lose control. Similarly, he can overestimate his own strength or energy. Many of his weaknesses are related to his heritage: he has an aversion to water (although is not as phobic as Vyncent) and cannot touch silver or crucifixes without pain. He has begun to depend on the luxury of the Ecritetrean upper class with a greed that borders on decadence, and has a particular weakness for gold. Power is his addiction, and he will go to foolish lengths to attain it, often overlooking subtler things to maximise his personal power. Altair also has an intense aversion to the cold; he operates at his best in temperate climes, and as the temperature drops so do his strength and energy levels, and extreme cold could be potentially lethal. He hates (almost phobically) snow. His obsessive desire for his daughter is also a weakness, as it causes him to act irrationally and outside his own best interests.
Weapons/Armour:
Altair chooses to wear no armour, and although has rudimentary training with several weapons he is by no means a master of anything, preferring to rely on natural strength and the use of magic.
Magic:
Altair has an inborn control of fire from his demon heritage: his fire is gold. He has also studied Arcane magic comprehensively, both travelling to famous Demian libraries and using his resources as a member of the nobility, mostly in the fields of Evocation and Abjuration, in order to maximise his personal power. Although his control of fire is somewhat lacking, he is a talented spellcaster, and fuels his magic from the same source.
Altair De Vaux
Aliases:
Altair assumes a variety of identities when necessary; mostly, however, his name and the associated prestige create the effect he is looking for.
Age:
413
Race:
Fire Demon
Gender:
Male
Occupation/Class:
Noble
Orientation:
Heterosexual
Physical Description:
Altair’s appearance is as striking as his personality. He stands just below six foot, with broad shoulders and a well-muscled body. Despite his bulk, his motions are fluid and graceful, and he holds himself with poise and posture appropriate to his self-assumed nobility. His skin is pale, almost silvery in colour, in direct contrast to his hair. It is blue-black, falling dead-straight to the curve between his shoulder blades. His features are delicate, finely boned and patrician, giving him a haughty, sharp look. His eyes, however, are the most striking aspect of his look: they are a deep, unblinking gold, flecked with dark amber, and are unreadable unless they are flashing with anger. Despite his arresting appearance, his demonism is not outwardly apparent, two ivory fangs among the only signs of his demonic heritage.
He wears elegant, fine clothes of black and gold, his signature colours, in the noble fashion of Ecritetre. He is never without a plain gold band, worn like a wedding ring around the ring finger of his left hand and wears a fine gold chain around his neck.
Personality Description:
Cold, aloof, silent. Altair holds himself apart from people behind a carefully constructed, nigh impenetrable façade. He is reserved, quiet, and icy, but does not come off as slow: his birdlike eyes reveal cunning and intelligence, and he is as sharp as a blade. He pursues his own desires with little thought for honour or tradition, inserting himself into the Ecritetrean nobility to enjoy their life of luxury.
His demonic nature is brutal, violent and bloodthirsty, driven by lust for destruction. His calculating, silent nature seems at odds with this heritage; in truth, Altair attempts to curb his more primal, carnal desires. His anger is well controlled and he rarely snaps, but he holds grudges that endure like slow-burning flames. He is undeniably vicious, unnecessarily cruel, arbitrarily violent and driven by greed, but he hides his nature behind a mask of civility sophistication.
As a nobleman, he surrounds himself with people of mortal blood, but Altair holds himself apart from them. While holding his own secrets back, he seeks to learn as much about the minds and ways of men as possible, and understands the ways of men better, perhaps, than most of his blood. However, understanding is not to be mistaken for affection. Altair sees people of mortal blood as less ‘worthy’ than more powerful demons, and manipulates them shamelessly. Altair’s loyalty is devoted only to power – if he has the power to control lesser beings, he finds no reason that he should not.
Alignment:
Chaotic Evil. Although he tries to curb his more animalistic, primal urges, he lacks the personal code of honour, loyalty or tradition that defines Lawful Evil characters. Plus he’s a demon and shit.
History:
Born more than four hundred years ago to unknown parents, Altair’s first memory is of fire. Having been left alone on the doorstep of a middle-class family, the quiet, good-natured baby had been taken in. After little more than a day, his fire had first manifested himself – the house burnt down, and the baby was found alone, miraculously safe, amongst the ashes.
From there, Altair’s early years were a chain of Ecritetrean foundling homes, accidents and beatings. As a boy, he was silent and enigmatic, with golden eyes and raven hair, and despite his association with a string of blackmails, thefts and attacks on fellow waifs, the crimes were always notoriously difficult to pin down. Rooms caught fire spontaneously, buildings burnt down, and Altair moved on.
When Altair was deemed old enough, he was thrust out into the world, his latest carers glad to be rid of the strange boy. A wandering witch in the Gris Montagne revealed his heritage to him, and his next few years were spent in a concentrated effort to monopolise on his potential power. Several violent, dangerous accidents taught him the need for control, at least until his strength grew. Having been taught to read and write by those who had cared for him, he made the connection between knowledge and power swiftly, and spent the next several years of his life travelling Demia, reading on his heritage and the magic he was beginning to master.
We take up Altair’s story again when he first meets Vyncent Schwarz, perhaps three hundred years ago, in a Märmosian pub. He recognised his fellow demon swiftly, and the two began to travel with one another. Altair was fiercely admiring of the High Demon’s power – something he had drunk lightly of and had already begun to crave like the air he breathed. The demon’s black flames enthralled him, and the blade that drank souls seemed to sing to him in his sleep. The two parted ways – in flame – after Altair’s failed theft of Vyncent’s beloved Amor, the beginning of their long resentment. The subsequent village-burning was associated to the notorious Vyncent Schwarz, already ramping up his bounty, although Altair narrowly escaped capture.
His failure at the hands of his fellow demon incensed the young Altair, but what terrified him was the risk of losing everything he had fought so hard to gain after a mistake as simple as burning a village. Lacking the strength of Vyncent, he knew magic or physical strength could not protect him forever, and he set about building his prestige. Winning wealth in secret through a combination of blackmail, murder, forged inheritance and petty theft, Altair established himself quietly amongst the Ecritetrean nobility under the house of De Vaux.
Aloof, cold and quiet, the De Vaux family was always a mystery. He kept himself apart from the court of the Ecritetrean royalty in a country manor, and so it passed unnoticed that the same man ruled the house for over two hundred years. Over those years Altair devoted himself to power, the only true god in the violent world of mortals. He studied Arcane magic comprehensively, directing his now considerable resources to increasing his own might. He sated his demonic urges in secret – peasants would disappear in the night from the surrounding countryside, and particularly nosy footmen would mysteriously vanish. Wives were taken and disappeared quietly under the veil of silence that hung over the house – that is, until Marie arrived, the black sheep daughter of another nobleman who considered a marriage to the enigmatic Altair De Vaux a very lucky arrangement indeed for his deranged daughter.
Marie had a fascination with the occult, and, despite Altair’s efforts at secrecy, uncovered her husband’s demonic heritage. Enthralled by his horrific secret, she neglected to take the potion that he had prepared for her to prevent a potential pregnancy. Never one to take notice of a wife except as an object to relieve his lust, he didn’t notice his wife’s pregnancy until it was too late to abort without her own death, which would draw unwanted attention from her father and the court, as Marie was still quite young.
When Altair was 394, his half-breed daughter, Etoile, was born. He had resolved himself to kill the child and pass it off as a miscarriage, but something about the infant enthralled him – she had the same golden eyes, same black hair, even if her features were those of her mother. He remained in the country manor for the first three years of her life, fascinated by the enigma that she presented. The sight of her incited a protective burning within her, a painful need for closeness, that he had never experienced before. It was only the mistake of an unfortunate maid, touching the sleeping baby in the presence of her father, which brought to Altair’s attention the danger she posed. The maid was torn apart in the nursery, and Altair realised that it was no longer prudent to remain in the manor – his daughter, and his need to protect her, threatened the semblance of civilisation he created for himself.
Despite retiring to his town house, he could not help himself from returning to see the child – he felt a mix of love and revulsion for what she could make him feel. She bonded easily with her father, much more so than with her half-mad mother. Over time, he withdrew further and further from her – the more they bonded, the closer he came to being bound to her forever. By the age of six, he resigned himself to never seeing her again.
He heard the news of his burning manor dispassionately, realising that the danger Etoile posed him was intensified if she had inherited the dangerous gifts he had. Far better, then, not to associate with her; to let somebody else handle the problems she faced. It was a chance to remove her from his life altogether. She was sent to live with a cousin of her mother in the capital as Altair returned to the country, rebuilding his manor. He had kept the girl’s birth a secret, and through a combination of blackmail and bribery passed her off as the daughter of his mother’s cousin. He severed contact with them, and lost contact with his daughter, unaware of her progression from her new parents’ townhouse to L’Academie and eventually Le Couvert.
Despite this, he couldn’t cut her off from his mind – she grew up in a quiet, hidden corner of his mind, as secret to himself as to the rest of the world, a dancing girl that visited him in repeated dreams. Finally, Altair decided that her influence on him was already too great to ignore: he had no choice but to seek Etoile out again and bring her back to him.
Likes:
Wealth, power, blood, fire, gold, luxury, expensive clothes, statues, gardens, all the trappings of wealth or power.
Dislikes:
Water (well duh), rain, cold, snow, ‘roughing it’, dirt, the lower class, the upper class, the classes in between, signs of weakness.
Strengths:
Altair has several inborn strengths. As a demon, he has heightened strength, speed and agility, as well as senses beyond those of mortals. Although he is not as fast as some of his demon kin, he is powerful and bulky, and his strength is among one of his best attributes. He also has an inborn summoning and control of fire, although this is not as developed as it could be. He has also studied Arcane magic comprehensively.
Weaknesses:
Altair’s nature is, ultimately, conflicted: despite his constructed facade of sophistication, he falls prey to demonic lusts as often as others of his kin, and devotes energy to a struggle to control these traits (which he sees as weaknesses) that could be better spent on other pursuits. In this, he also lacks the single-mindedness of many demons and has a tendency to hesitate before he acts. This is, at least in part, due to his relative youngness (at least for a demon), and the fact that he was never trained – Altair finds it difficult to control his inner demon, and struggles against his inclination to lose control. Similarly, he can overestimate his own strength or energy. Many of his weaknesses are related to his heritage: he has an aversion to water (although is not as phobic as Vyncent) and cannot touch silver or crucifixes without pain. He has begun to depend on the luxury of the Ecritetrean upper class with a greed that borders on decadence, and has a particular weakness for gold. Power is his addiction, and he will go to foolish lengths to attain it, often overlooking subtler things to maximise his personal power. Altair also has an intense aversion to the cold; he operates at his best in temperate climes, and as the temperature drops so do his strength and energy levels, and extreme cold could be potentially lethal. He hates (almost phobically) snow. His obsessive desire for his daughter is also a weakness, as it causes him to act irrationally and outside his own best interests.
Weapons/Armour:
Altair chooses to wear no armour, and although has rudimentary training with several weapons he is by no means a master of anything, preferring to rely on natural strength and the use of magic.
Magic:
Altair has an inborn control of fire from his demon heritage: his fire is gold. He has also studied Arcane magic comprehensively, both travelling to famous Demian libraries and using his resources as a member of the nobility, mostly in the fields of Evocation and Abjuration, in order to maximise his personal power. Although his control of fire is somewhat lacking, he is a talented spellcaster, and fuels his magic from the same source.
