Application -- Snowblind

[bookofnope]

Player Information

Name: Jax
Age: 30
Contact Info: PM at umbralpilot ; AIM at spacewolfb
Other Characters: None

Character Information

Name: Beckett
Canon: Vampire: the Masquerade
Age: Early 30s at time of vampiric Embrace; about 300 by now
Gender: Male
Canon Point: Post-Gehenna (official novel)
Background Link: At the ever-helpful White Wolf Wiki!
Inventory:
Comes complete with his own trenchcoat and fedora, because he's that kind of character apparently. Also a set of sturdy gloves and a pair of sunglasses. Otherwise, a satchel with a flashlight, writing implements, tape measure, magnifying glass - call it his battle archaeologist kit - and a heavily annotated copy of The Book of Nod.

Personality:

Beckett does not play well with others. This is rather significant considering that he is Kindred, and that most Kindred pass the long nights of immortality in playing complex political games between various factions, powerful individuals and contending philosophies. He has no traffic with any of that. His Clan affiliation is so unimportant to his identity that he prefers to be known as "of the Mnemosyne", his adoptive Sire's bloodline, and he has never given his allegiance to any of the major or minor vampire organizations or Princes. Strictly True Neutral. He holds the whole dance in mild contempt. He is Kindred, and that is all that matters. This fierce, contrary independence in a world that survives on alliance and intrigue has earned him a reputation that he carries proudly. When he must deal with his own kind, he follows the letter of their law, and goes through the motion of ritual, but any attempt to stir him to loyalty to person or cause is stonewalled if not lastingly resented, and pomp and procedure annoy him to no end.

His mild lack of social graces is mostly to do with aloof pride verging on outright arrogance. His sarcasm is pointed and constant, and he mocks what he views as superstition and blind loyalty or belief - or used to, at least, before the whole meeting Caine at the end of the world fiasco. He does not suffer fools at all, but he does have some patience for the young and inexperienced, if they show some aptitude and willingness to learn. He dispenses information - of the impersonal sort - freely, if sometimes in a typically cryptic vampire fashion, and is quick to offer good advice, even if its tone tends to be condescending. One gets the sense that he is reasonably fond of the sound of his own voice. Beckett knows a lot, and knows that he knows a lot. Get him talking about something that interests him, and he'll rather go on, though at least with some wry good humour. He is also well capable of close relationships with those few like-minded individuals he'd met in his days, fellow scholars of Kindred lore, or those who are similarly interested in goals outside the game of power and intrigue. But he approaches his social life in strict layers - he has a good number of allies, fewer companions, and very few friends. He is certainly willing to go to great lengths for those few friends, even to risk his own existence, but he remains intensely private about his own past. Even his longtime companions Lucita and Anatole, whom he properly loved, knew little to nothing of who and what he was before their first meeting.

He has no particular opinion on Mortals one way or another - the Kindred world is everything to him. He tries not to kill those he feeds on, and is generally disinterested in cruelty and power for their own sake, but he isn't given to altruism either. It's a cold world and he has urgent business in it. His zeal for independence, however, does extend into some disgust with vampires who use humans as tools or playthings. He tolerates it as a fact of vampire unlife, but that is another game in which he will never take part if he can help it.

Despite his aloof demeanour, he has a temper that he sometimes can't suppress - it's a vampire thing, or so he'd like to think at least. He has been known to lose it when particularly frustrated, and can get impatient, immortality and all, when he feels he's being led by the nose or forced to take the long and cautious way to something. His insatiable curiosity, and his rather good opinion of his own abilities, have led him into charge in and regret it more than once. He is essentially a risk-taker, except when it comes to combat - he has absolutely zero interest in fighting and considers the occasional necessary violence of his life a distraction and a headache. Confronted, he talks or flees, and hates being goaded into anger or worse, real bloodlust or frenzy. Self-control is very important to him, particularly due to the savage heritage of his Clan.

Beckett's all-consuming, three-hundred-year passion is - or was - or perhaps still is - the search for the true origins of vampirekind. He used to be a renowned skeptic on the matter, considering the Kindred's stories of Caine, Antediluvians, First Cities and so on to be myths. An archaeologist and anthropologist, he'd spent the majority of his unlife trotting the globe looking for hard evidence of the vampiric past, and did gain vast amounts of scholarship, though never a final answer. Curious, intellectual, unrelenting, a doubter, searcher and visionary, this quest was the core of his being. Then the apocalypse happened, and Beckett learned firsthand that not only was Caine very real, but that the Dark Father had no more idea of why vampires came to be than anyone else - and if he had any idea how, whether by divine intervention or some other supernatural mean, he wasn't telling. The revelation left Beckett something between inspired and a fatalistic wreck. The last we see of him, he is resolved to spread the revelation among the Kindred, and maybe finally snap them out of playing their power games and wasting their unlife on meaningless loyalties based in a meaningless past. But then, the world was ending, and he was also resigned to end with it. He'll be coming to Norfinbury in a bit of an existential dilemma.

Flavor Abilities:
Though his vampiric powers, senses, and resilience are nullified, Beckett would retain some basic features of Kindred nature, namely giving at least the appearance of being dead. He would still have the unnatural pallor, lower body temperature, and no pulse (though he now presumably needs to breathe, so that would be a visible vital sign). He would also retain the "frozen" nature of the Kindred, meaning his appearance would remain exactly as it was upon death, reverting from any change within the night - no visible ageing, no new scars, tattoos or other marks, no hair or nail growth or haircuts.

Prior to some unpleasant pre-apocalyptic events, Beckett had two animal features resulting from the particular curse of his Clan - glowing red eyes, and hairy, clawed hands. In the game, those features would reappear for a while whenever he drinks human blood, because it'd freak him out a little and be cool to play with. Neither features gives any kind of survival advantage - he can't see in the dark, and the claws would be fragile and useless.