[app for lastvoyages]

[socoolbrewster]

User Name/Nick: KaOS
User DW: don't have
AIM/IM: orderfromka0s
E-mail: promotedtocondiments [at] gmail [dot] com
Other Characters: notafuckingnut, wemaketheworld

Character Name: "Evil" Ed Lee
Series: Fright Night (2011)
Age: 18
From When?: Post-death during the showdown at Peter Vincent's apartment

Inmate/Warden: He's a recently-made vampire with a grudge against his former best friend and a recently discovered taste for violence and blood with little to no compunction for killing or immorality of any kind; suffice to say he's an inmate.

Abilities/Powers:

For a complete overview of all the nitty gritty details you might ever need to know (and a few you probably don't), it's all broken down here:  Your vampire and you: an Owner's Manual.

BUT.  In terms of what you ACTUALLY need to know, the basics are as follows:

Increased Strength, Endurance, and Durability: within the constraints of his own 'verse, Ed is significantly stronger, faster, and much harder to kill than your standard, garden variety human.  He can throw people across a room without trying, his reflexes are through the roof, and low-scale physics breaking (spider climbing, martial arts movie-style flips and the like) is standard.  Not to mention the fact that he can handle losing an arm or a chop to the neck and keep going without anything more than a little whining.
             Barge Limits: Ed won't be any stronger than a particularly athletic human.  Think longstanding UFC, cage fighter-type, not so much bulky bodybuilder or WWE.  He'll be stronger than his own body type would indicate, and stronger than any capabilities he had as a human, but not inordinately so, he won't be able to throw a car or anything.  Spider climbing and general physics-breaking will be entirely off-limits so long as they go above and beyond what the body can do itself; flips off the wall?  Definitely.  Climbing up a sheer surface using his claws as pitons?  He might get about halfway.  Climbing up it like a monkey?  Absolutely not.  Durability will go largely untouched, although the healing process will be an extra 50% drain; it will take a third longer to actually heal the injuries, but he will be twice as wiped out afterwards and need twice as much blood to refuel.  His own response to them, however, will be much the same as it would be off-Barge.

Hyper-Sensitivity: given that this interpretation of vampire is much more animalistic than the more mainstream varieties in pop culture, their senses are unsurprisingly much more ramped up.  They can scent like a shark, hear your heartbeat from the other side of the house, see in the dark as if it were a sunny day, and taste the air like a snake.  They are, in other words, the ultimate hunters.
              Barge Limits:  none.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: in keeping with traditional vampire mythology (thank you, Stoker), according to Fright Night (the original, at least) vampires can manage some minor shapeshifting.  Their own "natural" form is a different shape, after all, they have some experience with it on a regular basis.  In addition to the varying levels of vamp, they can also manage smoke and wolves, with practice.
              Barge Limits: Ed...quite frankly can't do anything more than the morphing that comes standard in the package at the moment.  Human to the kind of vampire we all envision to a demon-shark hybrid is all he knows, and even that is only because he doesn't have any control over it.  However.  With instruction and practice, he'll be able to master wolf eventually, although it will be only slightly larger than a regular wolf, will be virtually indistinguishable from a real wolf, and will be approximately the same age (and corresponding size) as he is developmentally.  Which means he'll be a cub if he ever learns it.  He won't ever be able to sustain it for more than 20 minutes, however  (without Warden request, anyway), no matter how much he practices.

*Note*: thanks to Jerry's help, he's actually got wolf in the pocket.  Again, he can't keep it up for long, but he can do it.

Bitch Got Bite: vampire blood can act as something of a paralytic if given to a human; a few drops and the victim will find themselves effectively boneless, zero muscular control to speak of.  It wears off within a few minutes, and it won't kill, but even so.  Even their saliva has a certain amount of this quality, although on a much smaller scale; anyone bitten by a vampire seldom feels inclined to fight back much once it's in-progress.
               Barge Limits: None.

Other Miscellaneous Creature Limitations:  immediate death can be caused by beheading, a stake to the heart, or sunlight (specifically UV).  Silver, however, has zero effect on them whatsoever.  They're also vulnerable to crosses (although not as much as you'd think, it mostly depends on the strength of faith of the one brandishing it), holy water, and holy relics.  They also can't be seen in mirrors (...or reflective surfaces in general) or captured on videotape.  Fire won't kill them, but it hurts like a bitch and tends to make them panic. They also need an invitation to cross the threshold of a private dwelling, or in this case individual cabins, although this doesn't apply to the homes of vampires since vampires are incapable of actually occupying anything, being dead and all.

Personality:

The funny thing about Evil Ed is that he wasn't even particularly evil when he was given the nickname. Weird, yes, different, yes, which is mostly what spawned it in the first place, but not evil, but in the way childhood nicknames given in the heat of the moment tend to, the right situation, the right audience, and the name stuck. In the hands of friends it became something different though, something cool; like Evil Knievel, it was just a word, not a description.

It was only later that it actually turned out to be appropriate.

Ed's the kind of guy who seems ubiquitous to just about every school. The one who's just a little strange -- ultimately harmless, but he never seems to be on quite the same page as everyone else. A few seconds too quick to laugh at the joke, or too slow to stop, or he skips the one everyone laughs at entirely to get amusement out of the one nobody else finds funny. He's got a twisted sense of humor, a tendency towards the macabre, and a bit of a reputation for being something of a spazz; he's high-strung by nature, given to sudden bursts of ideas and flurries of words, and once he's got an idea in his head he tends to purse it until he's exorcised it completely. Good for productivity, sure, great for projects and creativity in general, but not so good for the social life when you live one fixation for weeks at a time to the detriment of everything else.

Needless to say, he's also the kind of guy who tends to attract bullies of all shapes and sizes just by existing; he's awkward and gangly, he doesn't really fit in -- a fact which he generally seems to pride himself on, regardless of the trouble it usually gets him into -- and while by now he's pretty much used to it, the fact hasn't exactly helped him considering it's mostly just given him a thicker skin and a more sarcastic and snarky attitude towards...just about everyone who isn't a friend, even if they haven't done anything to him personally. Which only makes it worse on himself in the long run.

He's also a manipulative little shit when he wants to be; years of being used and abused by his classmates has given him something of a nasty streak, a tendency towards unscrupulous behavior when he has no other options he can see. Ordinarily he's happy to go along with whatever, but if he's dedicated enough to his plans and sees no other alternative to accomplishing his goals, he's not opposed to using underhanded methods to get what he wants; he blackmailed Charley to get him to check out Adam's house with him, after all.

Getting turned has done little to help any of this, in fact has only served to exacerbate most of it since it has by and large completely removed his moral code. He's a cocky little twerp, thoroughly convinced of his own superiority (vampires are stronger, faster, and just generally better than humans in every way, and even though it wasn't that long ago that he was dead certain they all needed to die he's not afraid to extol their virtues anyway). Nevermind that he's been one for all of days, and that he doesn't have anywhere near enough un-life experience just yet to back up the kind of noise he makes, he's a vampire now, and he's got a Sire who will absolutely back him up when he can't do it himself. ...Probably.

With his humanity removed, Ed's free to take his vengeance on the world, and as far as he's concerned he's 100% entitled to do so; he's had to take their shit for eighteen years, in his mind it's absolutely his right to return the favor now that he's got the means.  Under the guidance of Jerry he's become vicious and cruel, or at least on the surface he is, and once on the Barge he will only cling to this more tightly, trying to act just like his Maker to make up for his absence; all humans inferior, women little more than objects to be played with or blood bags, often times both in the same breath.  He might try to start up a brood of his own, turning those whom he deems worthwhile, but inevitably he'll give it up before long; the compulsion's there, it's part and parcel of the breed, but what's left of his heart won't be in it.

Path to Redemption:

The thing about Ed is that he's not everything he seems. Jerry did a number on him to get him to this point, threw just about everything that was wrong with his life in his face to get him to drop his guard and just give up; he had next to no friends, one was dead and the other wouldn't give him the time of day if he could help it, he didn't fit in, nothing seemed to be going his way, to hear Jerry tell it. And it was the kind of truth that you can't really even deny as a half-truth or twisted facts, it was a pretty accurate assessment. So when Jerry promised something better? Well there really wasn't much he could do but accept his fate.

Because when it all comes down to it, for as much as he claims otherwise, as much as he may say he's entirely content with what he's got in spite of everything, he really just wants a place to belong, people who want him to tag along. People who want him period, and family doesn't count because that's what they do. Charley just up and deciding to cut him out of his life because he was "inconvenient" to what he wanted from life hurt as deeply as the things Jerry said, in fact it's why what Jerry said had the effect it did, and ever since Charley decided to stop being friends with him and Adam because they were "too weird" he's been trying to fill that gap one way or another.

And even though he's a vampire now, the need is still there.

Any Warden taking on Ed should keep this in mind; regardless of anything he says or does, regardless of how solitary he gets and how much he might snap and lash out, he's still looking to fill that space. He desperately wants someone he can nerd out with, someone he can share his ridiculous ideas with and just generally be himself around without having to worry about what they'll do or if they'll stick around. And he won't be picky about their alignment either; he's actually evil right now, or at least disregards morals enough to be a pretty good facsimile, so he won't really care if the gap is filled with someone just as bad or worse or an actually halfway decent person. Anyone who shows at least a little inclination will do, and they'll be in a fairly solid position to shape his own perspective on things.

The funny thing about Ed is that he's a walking contradiction; he loves what he can do, the power he's got because of it, and if you were to ask him flat-out he would probably tell you he wouldn't go back for anything. He's the big wolf on campus now, he can't be pushed around any longer, and now that he's got it he can't wait to use and abuse it. But, by the same token, he's new at this, not as inhuman as, say, Jerry, who's been a vampire for some 400 years and consequently is pretty well stuck in his ways. He's more drunk on the power than anything else; he even says himself that he blames Charley for the whole thing, for letting Jerry turn him, implying that he really doesn't like the situation as much as he claims. He's stuck living in the dark, sleeping in dirt, living off other people like a human-shaped leech, and it's really not something he ever wanted for himself. He loves what he can do but to a degree hates what he is, and he deeply resents both Charley and Peter for their parts in it; Charley for turning him away when he needed it and putting him in a position where it could happen at all and Peter for misrepresenting himself, claiming he was an expert in the field when really he was just a showman with fancy words who didn't even believe his own spiel. There's still the old Ed lurking in there somewhere, and a major key to his redemption will be keeping that intact as much as possible, if not trying to bring it to the forefront.

The only block to this will be his loyalty to Jerry.  Jerry promised him everything, told him he would protect him, keep him safe, make sure he never hurt again and give him the tools to keep it that way.  Everything he never had as a human, Jerry told him he would provide as a vampire, and for as much as he might hate what he did and what he made him, he's insecure enough by nature that he'll cling to those promises with tooth and nail, even if they were...less than truthful.  Jerry was the equivalent of a cult leader, more inclined to feed his followers with the things they wanted to hear to keep them at his side than to actually follow through with any of them (more than he needed to, anyway), and Ed needs to recognize this if he's ever going to make any kind of progress.

History:

Ed's been a geek his whole life; from being introduced to the original Batman tv show as a kid to a childhood revolving around whatever animated superheroes and comics he could get his hands on, he's spent most of his life living in a fantasy world in one way or another; cartoons and comics branched out into Star Wars, Star Trek, Hercules, Xena, Farscape, Cons and cosplay and swordfights with boffer weapons and improvised armor among like-minded kids. He met Adam and Charley in kindergarten, and from then on the three were all but inseparable: Squid Man, Gladiator Boy, and Kid Comeback, banded together against the jocks and jerks who didn't quite get their brand of Different. The hallways were tough, hostility and black eyes lurking around every corner, but with the three of them? It was manageable.

And then high school rolled around, and everything changed.

It started gradually at first; sophomore year full meetings of the trio increasingly became duos, Ed and Adam left in the lurch more and more often for more and more transparent reasons; plans made when there hadn't been a conflict before, surprise visits, or flat-out refusals to answer the phone. Junior year brought an even further breakdown of the group, and before Senior year had even started Charley had stopped talking to them entirely, and started hanging out with the same jocks and jerks who had spent their every waking moment tormenting them, to add insult to injury.

Ed took this especially hard, refusing to accept one of his best friends had been replaced with a pod person in the name of girls; unlike Adam, who just wrote him off, he clung to the hope that he'd one day come to his senses, so he kept trying to pull him back into the group despite the extra crap he got because of it, right up until the day Adam disappeared.

They'd had their suspicions for a while; a new guy in the neighborhood and then a sudden rash of disappearances over the next weeks, it was too weird to dismiss as coincidence. So they started following him, videotaping him, building their case, and finally, after weeks of work, they had their conclusion: he was a vampire. Ridiculous, of course, but the proof was there, it was undeniable, each point on its own only circumstantial but together overwhelmingly compelling.

They were supposed to hunt him down together, skip school to ambush him in his house during the day and put an end to the monster, only...morning came, Ed left early for the meeting point as agreed, but Adam never showed. So he went to the only person he knew might care enough to do something. Charley.

Except it didn't go as planned and he ended up a vampire instead. And then got staked by his (former) best friend, only to wake up on the Barge.

Sample Journal Entry the First:

Heyyy, what's shakin', bacon?

...See, it's funny because you're food. Just a bunch of walking milkshakes.

[He snickers, a slightly unhinged little laugh, and it's clear that aside from the deathly pale skin and too-dark glint of his eyes there is something seriously Not Right about him. You may have seen him in the hallways earlier, he was skulking around before deciding to post something.]

But anyway.

[Evil leans back in the chair, as relaxed as a tiger stalking its prey from afar, and smirks. Behind him you can see a room that looks almost stereotypically "nerdy teenage boy"; movie posters from just about every horror movie known to man paper the walls, and there's a row of Star Wars action figures lined up on a shelf somewhere behind him. The only thing that doesn't quite seem to fit is the large wooden crate stuck in the middle of the room.]

Chuckles, you out there? Because if this is some kind of fucked up newbie hunter joke I am so gonna kill you. And it's gonna be messy as fuck.

Sample Journal Entry the Second:

[Sent from Zero]

[PUBLIC]

[There's a pissed-off moody teenage vampire glowering Death at you all, Barge.  Behind him you can see the room's been clawed to hell and back, deep scores dug into just about every surface he could reach.  Now he's just sitting, seething, and still half morphed.]

That's right, lock me up.  I see how it is.  I'm sorry, did I hurt somebody's poor widdle feewings?  You try to live off a "fun size" bag of chips twice a day for a week and tell me how it works out for you.  Fine, I did bad and I got stuck in permanent detention until somebody gets their head out of their ass, but come on.  I yam what I yam, and what I yam is fucking starving.  I can't live like this.  

Next asshole I see is hamburger meat, I don't even care.

[PRIVATE to Jerry.  ...well.  He tries, anyway.]

I...

[All the hesitation.]

I'm sorry.  I was only trying to get a snack, I didn't mean to go that far.

Sample RP:

He'd expected it to hurt more.

Not that he'd ever really thought about it; a stick on steroids shoved through your chest wasn't exactly something you usually contemplated. Sure, he'd had a few in-depth discussions with Adam about what killing a vampire might be like, but...somehow they'd never thought they would be on the other side of it. It was one of those horror movie situations, you don't think about what the monster's feeling because he doesn't matter. He's only there to be killed off in the end.

He's not you, except for in werewolf movies. Or zombie flicks. And even then it's more metaphorical than serious. "The Beast That Lurks Inside Everyone". "The Growing Pandemic of Consumerism". Not actually you.

But here he was. Heart, meet stake, and there was Charley, the fucking smug bastard. Fitting, that he got it now, after it was already too late. After he got Amy the stupid skank involved. Figures it would be the chick that did it. Sell-out little shit. Too fucking perfect; the prodigal friend returneth. Ed wanted to laugh, but he had a sneaking suspicion it would only make things worse on his end, and he doubted Charley would get the joke anyway.

His fingers were smoking, dissolving. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. He could feel them, but that hurt less than he'd thought too. Less than the hole in his chest, anyway. Less than the gaping slice in his neck that didn't bleed like he'd expected it to. But then again, you needed a real heartbeat for that, not the occasional halfhearted flop.

Charley frowned, looked like he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words, but at least he looked sorry about it. Good, he should, but Ed couldn't really find the malice for it. He hadn't wanted this, not really. And in that moment, he forgave him for everything. All of it.

"It's okay, Charley."

...Except it wasn't. Because he closed his eyes in one place, only to open them in dirt. Again.

"FUCKING SHIT."