TLV Application

User Name/Nick: Danii
User DW: yarnzipan
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: yarnzipan @ plurk
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Kiryu Kazuma, John Gaius, John Doe, Jon Sims

Character Name: Jonathan Emmet Reid
Series: Vampyr (2018)
Age: 32
From When?: post canon of the 'Not Even Once' playthrough

Warden Justification: Reid is a doer all the way; despite being from a rich family, he chose to go into medicine and despite being able to avoid service (in fact his mother wished he hadn’t gone) he enlisted to fight in the Great War and served as a medical officer in France at the front. He is chosen by a mystical spirit blood THING/progenitor of vampires (it’s weird) to be a Champion of his city/country/the world and throughout the game, despite being angry about having his life essentially derailed and the whole thing causing his twin sister’s death, he never backs down or backs away from dealing with the situation at hand both medically and when it comes to getting into the middle of the action, working with people who are terrible or confusing or difficult in turn. It’s actually a game mechanic that it’s important to care for people in the various districts, their health and their emotional well being, so caring is really just… his thing. It's also a huge game mechanic that Reid is constantly faced with difficult choices and while the playthrough I chose is one where he doesn't kill anyone, he would be the first to say it's not necessarily the one where he always made the right choice. He chose not to kill at least two serial killers and several people who on average make everyone's lives worse and he knows it; he knows that life is complicated and morals are complicated and drawing lines are complicated. When it comes down to it, he 100% knows what it is to have guilt on his conscience and temptations that can drag you onto the wrong path and holy hell does he know what it is to pick the least bad choice. Despite the many moralities present in the people he deals with, he finds a way to work with them for the most part and while he won't fail to decry evil for what it is, he always tries to find the best in people and encourage it when the option is there.

He was raised alongside his sister by parents who were kind and supportive and who genuinely wanted their children to be good people. Despite being very well monied, Jon and Mary were encouraged to be respectful and decent to everyone, to keep their minds and hearts open, and see others as people in need of care instead of being encouraged to look down on them due to their means. He tends to try to be gentle until provoked and he will try as many times as necessary to get someone to see reason, to take a path which causes the least harm for them and those around them before taking up arms against them. He is the kind of person who must get involved, who sees a situation where people are in need and cannot help but intercede.

He's curious, an investigator by desire as opposed to profession, having loved puzzles from a young age, and he enjoys listening to people discuss their troubles and their interests; I imagine it will serve him well as a warden.

Item: His pocket watch, which will act normally most of the time but will point towards his inmate when looking to locate him and have the face write out questions or information when he needs to request a resurrection.

Abilities/Powers: Reid, as a vampire, has a number of abilities, including:

• Mesmerism, which enables a vampire to implant thoughts, erase memories, or simply force people to do things
  
• A light compel he can use to gently ease people into answering his questions.
  
• Great physical strength
  
• a light glamour which hides his nature unless observed closely by those trained to know the difference
  
• Heightened senses including his hearing, his sense of smell, his ability to sense blood specifically (inside or outside of a body), his sight in the dark, etc.
  
• Diagnosis at a glance, including the stage of the illness
  
• Power over blood
  
• Power over shadows
  
• Physical weapons that manifest at will, including claws and fangs
  
• The ability to hide himself from sight
  
• The ability to teleport short distances via shadows (think Nightcrawler)
  
• The ability to gain full knowledge of the life and personage of anyone he would embrace (drink to death) and I'd imagine more incomplete knowledge for those he only drinks partially from
  
• The ability to hear the thoughts of anyone he drinks from while drinking from them
  
• with more specifics listed here
  
• Sunlight burns him, but only direct sunlight, and it apparently cannot actually kill him. It will burn him to a crisp, but come dark, he will start to regenerate if allowed and will make a recovery eventually. It just hurts a LOT and is pretty fricking obvious. UV Light works similarly.
  
• Must be invited into occupied living spaces; mesmerism works over the threshold, though.
  
• Fire, on the other hand, will straight up kill him. We have at least one example in canon (two if you, uh... killed a few too many people).
  
• Garlic is deeply unpleasant; he's basically allergic the same way a person would be.
  
• Crosses need to be held and their protection actively invoked against him. There's at least one vampire shown to be wearing a cross himself and numerous ones are around and do nothing to him.
  
• Holy water? Doesn't seem to do much, honestly.
  
• Stakes? are about as deadly as anything else. There's no specific thing that kills vampires so much as the destruction of/severing of the heart or head. Thus enough bullets totally work on them. As do swords, etc.
  
• Orihalcum powder weakens them and seems to be the only thing that does. It seems to work a little like kryptonite: the presence is painful and a blade dipped in the stuff takes much longer to heal.

Wardening Strategies and Philosophies: Reid will come to the Barge prepared to do his duty, but as soon as he gets a feel for how the Barge actually works, his focus will turn just as much to care for the community and both looking out for others and ensuring the health of everyone on board. He will view his role of warden as one very much of responsibility and with a great deal of seriousness when it comes to said responsibility... but not much else. He's the kind of person who, while deeply polite, doesn't stand on ceremony overly much and he cares too much not to speak his mind or allow his personality to enter the equation on how he handles situations. That said, once he gets the 'vibe' for how wardens do what they do, he'll put protecting inmates and helping them towards their redemption as very much a deeply important part of his days as he takes his oaths Very Very seriously. He'll be a very proactive warden looking to question and learn and get a feel for his inmate before he starts stepping in to help them find a better path, and I see him as the sort to try and very much make sure he's walked the walk before he ever talks any talk. He'll try to engage his inmate either through debate or good natured games, stories, and rousing discussions.

I would say his strengths are his patience, his compassion, and his willingness to engage with the complications brought with a life and how they interplay with any situation and change the perspective of someone involved. He's also a brilliant, clever and charming man and extremely eloquent when need be. He's brave, always willing to stick his neck out and do what's necessary (even if he'll occasionally be grumpy about it when his sense of fairness is ignored). His weakness would probably come from his stubbornness and his unwillingness to bend on certain moral points even given some of the moral relativism found on board, and he won't do well with someone who tends towards being petty, power-grubbing, or overly selfish as he'll write them off and be a snarky bitch about it.

Deal: He is here to restore the life of his twin sister, who he killed in a blind blood frenzy during his first moments of his new life (and then killed again when she couldn't manage to be sane as a vampire).

History: Here and here are his wiki pages. Here is the series of choices I made during the playthrough I'm playing from.

Sample Network Entry: My Dear Elisabeth,

I realize that we have parted ways of late, and you have made it clear that I am to give you the space that you require. And yet, I cannot leave you in the dark as to my current location and the quest to which I have turned my energies.

I was approached by a being much like the one who brought me into my second life, as confusing and inhuman as he ever was, though significantly more wiling to deal with me up front. He offered to me the chance to restore my sister's life, not to the cursed half-life which drove her to madness but to life in truth now since moved past the both of us. You must know the questions that I asked, the care which I took to ensure that no harm would be done for such a gift, no devil's bargain struck, but it turns out that this strange otherworldly entity seeks only to redeem those who have passed beyond the veil and it is to that purpose I have been bent.

This place is strange, I will readily admit, and yet it is full of miracles and wonders such that I can hardly describe to you. There are men and women from other worlds, from other times and places than our own, including the future. There is a library such that you would weep for its size and the great variety of books found within, many of them from worlds unfamiliar to me or concerning subjects I could scarcely dream of before I spied the words on the spine. I feel as if I am an endless gorging beast every time I go to the place, taking and claiming a dozen books or more to see the leaps and bounds accomplished by men and women of science, medical marvels such that I and my compatriots could never have dreamed of. It is as humbling as it is exciting and I fear that even after I have finished the work put to me by the Admiral, as he is known, I might stay another decade merely to read through all the volumes I have found.

Also, I must know: does our world have werewolves? I recall the beast in the sewers but I can hardly claim to have studied the monstrous thing given I spent most of my time with slicing at it with my surgical saw and trying not to die.

Sample RP: TDM entry | tag in | tag in

Special Notes: ...he has a potted plant named Lisa which will never stop being funny to me. And he is actually very much aware of the novel Dracula referencing it many times