Post by Michael Hunter on Jun 1, 2008 11:44:40 GMT -5
Michael Hunter
"The Prince of Light"
"The Prince of Light"
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B A S I C S
Name: Angelus
Age: 63
Species: Vampire (born Malkavian)
Birthday: 28th January, 1946
Sexuality: Bisexual
Other: Since joining the Vampires he has gone by the name of Michael Hunter – there are very few, if any, who know of his past as Angelus, and those who do are likely to use it against him. He is also owner of the Underworld nightclub, where most people only know him as the Prince of Light.
A P P E A R A N C E
Hair Colour: Brown
Eye Colour: Honey brown (gold when transformed)
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 12 Stone
I N D E P T H
Personality: Despite his young age – at sixty-three barely approaching human old age – Michael’s experience and prowess are extremely valuable to the coven. While older Vampires must be relied on to do the fighting, Michael’s talents lie in providing the coven with technologies and income, inventing of some of their cleverest defences. Branching off from this he is owner of the one of Manchester’s most famous and hard to get into nightclubs – Underworld. Primarily Michael uses the Underworld as a distraction from the depressing realities of the war, but he also runs a tight trafficking business behind close doors, managing a constant flow of human blood donors for the Vampires. Michael genuinely tries to be humane and compassionate when he can, but in a business such as his he is blinded by statistics and profit, falling short of this. Rarely does he have a conscious over the suffering and debasement of the humans processed through the Underworld, and he makes it no secret to the Lycans and Malkavians of the city that they lurk there at their own risk. Michael has strict rules though – the Underworld is his domain, and anyone seeking to turn it into a battle ground will undoubtedly meet the less rosy side of Michael Hunter.
Michael is not all business though. Having witness the deteriorating affect of the war’s presence on others, Michael believes it is healthier to focus on things aside from fighting. He is a lover of art and literature, passionately following all the contemporary geniuses so as not to remain in the dusty past like so many of his elders, and can often be found blending into the human crowd as well as the Vampire one. But Michael is by no means a pacifist – he may not go searching for trouble, but can be counted on to give his best performance when confronted. His age puts a limit on his strength but he is cunning and swift, usually relying on evasive techniques as his best defence. His business experience has also made him an excellent negotiator – despite being enemies Michael has a natural leaning towards the Malkavians, having once been one, and can be relied on to make talks with them when necessary.
But Michael has many demons lurking in his memories. Although he tries to suppress his childhood he cannot deny that Angelus, his Malkavian self, was his better self. He naturally rejects the Malkavian race as enemies but deep down still holds them as a symbol of his old goodness and innocence. As a Vampire he murdered the only person he ever loved, and since then has struggled to justify his blood lust, caught between human guilt and Vampire nature. He surrounds himself with a material lifestyle under a cloak of civility, but there is always an animal brutality bubbling just beneath the surface…
Family: The identity of his real family is something that was kept a secret from Michael. The few details the Vampire Tristan permitted him to know were that his biological parents died during the Second World War, and that he came under Tristan’s guardianship via the Malkavians. His current family are the Vampires.
History: There is rarely a Vampire, Lycan or Malkavian that can claim they had a normal upbringing, but in Michael’s case there was to be no time in his early childhood when he was free of the ungodly truth raging beneath the human world. While most were only thrown into the turbulent war after a chance at an ordinary existence, Angelus – who came to be known as the self-styled Michael Hunter decades later – was not given that luxury.
The oldest story Angelus could remember was the tale of how he had come to be with Tristan. Born during the Second World War, Angelus was stolen from his parents by a selfish Malkavian woman and abandoned at the Vampire’s door in the dead of night. His mother, a dying Malkavian, had given birth to him in a convent nearing the war’s end, having been outcasted by her family for conceiving a soldier’s baby out of wedlock. She had not lived long enough to name her only son, and so Tristan had named him appropriately, deciding to raise him under the cover of stars, destined to be a Vampire.
Tristan was particularly blood thirsty, even by Vampire standards, but resisted reducing Angelus to no more than prey. But all Vampires have a weakness for blood. Angelus was submissive enough to make no protest when Tristan would awake after several days of slumber, shouting in pain from the horrendous hunger pains tearing up his stomach, and proceed to take from Angelus what he needed in order to hunt efficiently. Tristan’s excuse for hurting Angelus in this way, for he was usually drained well beyond a safe level, was that Angelus’s Malkavian healing abilities repaired his broken skin and replenished his blood very quickly – but, being only small and easily panicked, Angelus was often extremely ill. Although it was Tristan’s doing he resented having to take care of a human child at the expense of his own lifestyle, and often blackmailed Angelus into working like a slave under threat of ‘accidentally’ be drained beyond revival. He lived in constant fear, but not knowing any better he still sought Tristan’s love and approval. Through this he persuaded Tristan to give him a minor education in the basics, from where Angelus took off independently and rather impressively.
However – whereas his mind blossomed, his body was beginning to diminish. Tristan was paranoid of Angelus being out of his sight and so for years he was forbidden from being awake when Tristan slept – which meant Angelus never saw daylight. But the debilitating heaviness of the night was stunting Angelus’s development, turning him into a ghostly hermit with strange behaviours and fascinations, and knowing he could not grow up without a sound mind Tristan began to allow Angelus to be awake during the day, taking in much needed vitamin D and learning of other natural phenomenon. At first Angelus was predictably fearful of the glaring light of the human world, often spending all day in dark cupboards until Tristan’s waking should signal the night had come at last. But Tristan was adamant that Angelus should get stronger – before the sun came up he would lock Angelus out of the lair to be at the mercy of daytime, chaining his ankle to a tree so that he could not come back inside or runaway. Angelus did indeed come to enjoy the day, finding it a much happier and peaceful time then the depressing gloom of night. And so he became curious to see what else Tristan had kept from him…
During daylight hours when Tristan slept, incapable of sensing Angelus’s movements or whereabouts, he would secretly wriggle free of his chain and go out into the city to explore. The bright, warm metropolis of daytime Manchester was worlds away from the dangerous shadows by which Tristan had forced him to live, and he revelled in it, mingling with other humans and observing their lives. He had always believed Tristan’s stories that Vampires, Lycans and humans alike would try to hurt him, but he soon realised that human nature, his true nature, was benevolent, and that for the first time in his life he was able to talk to someone other than his father. A handsome and alluring boy, Angelus approached other children with ease. From watching Tristan hunt prey he had learned the subtle art of seduction and soon persuaded other humans that he was trustworthy. It was when he fell in love with Kohana that danger began to follow.
She was the same age as Angelus, thirteen, an Oriental gem continents away from her homeland and something Angelus had not seen before. Bold and kind she was exotic and different, lost in the locality of 1950s England. Not attending a school, and without a second name or any obvious family, many questioned Angelus as to why he was so secretive – what was he hiding? - but Kohana respected this about Angelus, and between them a silent understanding was forged that there was something dark about the two of them, something that could not yet be probed...
Angelus found comfort in watching Kohana’s wholesome and ordinary life, and for years she allowed him to follow her, a habit he had picked up accompanying Tristan’s hunts. Often in the day she would glimpse him by the school gates or smiling at her on crowded streets, and at night she would sense him by her window just for a fleeting moment, as if he were afraid to be there. The thrill of being chased combined with the dark mystery of Angelus’s past was bewitching to Kohana, and eventually her curiosity and infatuation grew too strong. She too, loved Angelus. There was something in his demeanour that implied their love was a forbidden one, but together they submerged themselves in the excitement of it, sure only of one thing and that was that they would never abandon each another.
But something was straining their closeness. Kohana had always respected Angelus’s secrets, never pressing him to tell her what disturbing presence had stalked in for all these years. She would see it sometimes as he emerged from a daydream or a distraction – the sharp look over his shoulder, the doomed realisation, as if he had let his guard down for the last time. She had always known he lived in fear of some inhuman force and at last came the time when she demanded Angelus reveal his true self to her. Angelus resisted, trying to ward her off with the warning that she would not look at this world the same ever again, but Kohana’s will was irresistible. And so he told her.
He was a Malkavian with the power to heal, a prisoner of his Vampire father and destined to be blooded as one.
Angelus expected Kohana to react furiously to this, unable to believe a word and deciding that she could not be with someone who told fantasy instead of truth – but she did not. Kohana had always known there was something frighteningly different about Michael from the moment she had seen him. He was an angel pursued by shadows, and she had wanted to be the light that cast them away.
Free and happy, Angelus thought his future could not look brighter – but the release of such a secret was the end of something else: his human life. Tristan had always been suspicious of what Angelus did during the daylight hours when he could not sleep, padding around their lair, never giving a straight answer – what did he occupy himself with?
He never considered that Angelus’s curiosity would lead him to the outside world – but one fateful twilight revealed the evidence written across Angelus’s face: he was sunburnt. Earlier that day Angelus and Kohana had fallen asleep under a tree in the park, unaware that the sun had shifted. He had woken to find his cheeks and forearms prickling with heat, and only a few hours later was red skinned. Tristan raged at this, demanding to know for how long he had been doing this and where he had been going. The Vampire had been vigilant in keeping Angelus’s existence from the other Vampires, but there was little protection from the Lycans who could approach him in the day, the scent of a Vampire all over him. For the first time in his life Angelus lost his temper at Tristan, throwing the truth in his face and proud of it. Tristan was sickened – he had always tried to keep his Angelus from mingling with humans knowing he not be able to love them for long, that it was for his own good. Angelus laughed at this, revealing that for Kohana he had decided to stay human and that he would not follow the path Tristan had set for him – he was not his real father and he would not be controlled by him.
Of course, Tristan could not accept this. He had risked his life raising Angelus, and he had not exiled himself from his kindred simply to be cast aside by an ignorant human of all things. If he could not protect Angelus from the poisonous love of humans then he would have to make it impossible for him to visit them when Tristan was unable to stop him. He had always warned Angelus that his blooding would come on his thirtieth birthday in his prime when he was the finest specimen of a human he could be – but that would now have to change…
That night, Tristan lured the twenty-year-old Angelus into the deepest vault of their liar, under the pretence that he needed to drink his healing Malkavian blood. Although still angry at Tristan he submitted, reoccupied with the thought of meeting Kohana later that morning. He quickly realised it was a trick however. Tristan overpowered his weak human body, revealing that it was time for him to face his destiny.
The events that followed have remained blurry to Angelus ever since. As Tristan bit down into his throbbing jugular, swallowing his blood in deep, deadly draughts, his thoughts left him and rendered him unconscious. When Angelus awoke, drenched in his own blood and flung limply in the corner, he realised he was now a Vampire. Every one of his senses felt fresh and rejuvenated, his vision bright and pulsating as his new sense of smell threatened to knock him out with its intensity. Angelus lamented having been turned against his will - he felt like the monster he had always seen in his father, and he knew that the only way he could come to accept himself was if his true love accepted him first. That night he headed straight for Kohana, showing her what Tristan had finally done. Kohana broke down, feeling that Angelus had been taken from her on some level – but Angelus realised something they could do to still be together.
Angelus offered Kohana, his best friend and lover, the immortal gift that had been forced upon him. Kohana was fearful of this however – why had Angelus allowed himself to become such a creature when he had been so adamant about living a human life? Angelus wanted to confide in her that he had planned to propose to her and remain human, but that the cruel nature of Vampires was a fickle thing to contend with. Once turned she would be a tender and true like him, her goodness eternally preserved. They would live as rogues and never see the damned city of Manchester again – they would have their own kingdom of underlings and would live to be stronger than Tristan could ever be.
But Kohana resisted. All she could see was Angelus’s light finally eclipsed by what Tristan had intended for him to be, and she rejected him, declaring their life together could no longer be possible. Angelus’s heart broke at this – along with his rationality. How could she refuse immortality? He had shown her his power, his beauty – and now she was condemning him? Something snapped in Angelus, his love turning to possession. Without hesitating he brutally took her in his arms, breaking the skin of her smooth throat with his fangs. She screamed and fought as he drained the life from her, his vivid gold eyes burning with inhuman rage as he drank her to the brink of death. But in his fury he had neglected one thing – Tristan had never given him the knowledge of how to blood another. His own transformation had been like a waking nightmare, foggy and dark and terrifying. All that he truly remembered was the pain and the taste of blood – but whose? His severed artery leaking his throat and drowning him… or Tristan’s blood? He remembered the unusual taste in his mouth, as though the blood in it were not his own.
Frantically Angelus tried to feed Kohana his own blood, but she was too weak, her throat and neck so badly savaged she could not even swallow. Within moments she was dead, leaving Angelus with the remains of his most fatal mistake.
Mentally unhinged by what he had done, Angelus no longer pretended his immortality to be a blessing. He returned to Tristan still numb with the shock of his first killing and fell into his father’s arms, seeking a retreat from the awful images burned forever into his memory – but there was none. In his tender state Tristan saw the chance to manipulate Angelus back into dependency, making him believe that the world was even more dangerous for him now. He bombarded Angelus with fears and threats, explaining that the only safe place was forever under Tristan’s leadership. Angelus had been scarred permanently by what he had done; full of guilt at how euphoric Kohana’s dying body had felt in his crushing embrace, the taste of adrenaline in her blood as sweet as sugar. He could not see how it was possible to live such a life, killing the innocent, forever keeping loved ones at arms length for fear of harming them. He wanted nothing other than to die, and decided he was for this world no more…
But there was someone else who deserved to die even more than he. Tristan had denied him almost everything in life – an education, daylight, freedom, human contact, and Angelus blamed him fiercely for the sequence of events that had resulted in Kohana’s death. He knew Tristan’s reign of terror had to end. He was alone and dangerous, and Angelus would not let him destroy yet another life.
Angelus lay in wait for the night that Tristan chose to retreat to his coffin early. With the liar so poorly protected from light Tristan had found coffins a morbid necessity, and Angelus used this to his advantage. As the first signs of the lightening sky appeared through the window, Tristan’s body rendered in a catatonic state until he sensed the sun had gone down once more; Angelus was free to put his plan into action. Although he was safe from Tristan he was by no means, as a freshly turned fledgling, safe from even the slightest of natural light. As he used his supernatural strength to heave Tristan’s coffin from their home he struggled to fight the subduing throb of light rising on the horizon. When he finally placed Tristan’s coffin at the steps of a church he fled back to their liar, barely making it as the first blisters burned the side of his face…
The next night Angelus awoke and returned to what he knew he would find – Tristan’s coffin gone, the area sectioned off by police tape. Curious to find an ornate coffin on the front step of a church, humans had opened it, Tristan consequently turned to ash by the merciless sun.
This bought only minor pleasure to Angelus though, the death of Kohana haunting him. Realising that his work was done, his purpose served, Angelus travelled to the outskirts of the city where he knew no shelter from the morning rays. There he waited for the dawn in an open field, staring at the sky and wondering how he had come to this. It was only when the first streaks of light caught the glint of something through the trees that Angelus observed a huge white manor house. As he focused on it his vision began to burn, the light finally having found his body. His tortured cry rung out through the nothingness around him, the roar of the sun in his ears drowning out the past, present and future…
It was only when Angelus awoke several weeks later did he realise he was not as dead as he had hoped. His skin withered and blackened by the scorching light, Angelus was forced to remain in the cool depths of the mysterious manor house for many months, growing back eyes, tongue and skin. Under the watchful presence of the one who claimed to have saved him, the Vampire general Ranvier Flynn, Angelus came to learn of all that Tristan had refused to tell him about the Vampires – of Alexandria Rayne’s origins and their thousands of years of history, of their war with the Lycans and, to his shock, the Malkavians.
Several long months passed as Angelus fully healed. He realised he no longer had the accelerated healing of his Malkavian blood, but that it had been replaced by a superior Vampire capability. The scarring of the sun was stronger than any bullet or fire, and so it was an agonising process, requiring Ranvier to bring him blood in his miserable state. There of course came the time when Angelus was able to at last venture into the upper storeys of the manor, the scale and extravagance of the Vampire lifestyle shocking him. Why had Tristan chosen to live in his dingy, unprotected lair when he had a home such as this? But Angelus had always known that Tristan was an outcast with good reason, a mistake in his past rendering him an outsider. Ranvier had not left out their traditions and laws when explaining everything to Angelus, and he knew a Vampire interacting with a human in the way Tristan had was considered a crime against their nature – if they had ever been discovered, both would have been killed.
And so Angelus was cornered when finally asked his name and origin. Who had blooded him without consent of the Vampire Lord, and why had he chosen to remain undetected for so long? Angelus’s quick explanation was that he did not know – he presented Ranvier, Demetrius and Silas with the story that he was suffering from amnesia. Too weak to even feel nervous his lie passed under their radar, the affects of a Vampire surviving the sun a tough phenomenon to study, and so his tale could not be contradicted. Pretending that he did not know even his name, Ranvier mockingly suggested they named him after the archangel Michael, the Prince of Light. Having lived a lie for so many years with Kohana, Angelus personally adopted the name to bury his previous identity; one he no longer wanted to feel was a part of him. Blooded, healed and reborn, he would now forever be known as Michael.
He was accepted into the Vampire tribe with sympathy, an orphan having suffered much hardship at a young age, and under his new regime ‘Michael’ flourished. No longer was he confide to the intimidating side of Tristan when wishing to hunt or be alone, and with strict training and guidance on how to hone his Vampire abilities, he quickly learned what it took to be a Vampire at war. He was not yet permitted to encounter any Lycans in a proper battle situation, for Vampires took care of their own and wanted no unnecessary casualties, but often when hunting or travelling with other underlings he would be forced to fight, coming off worse for wear several times. Michael had not yet suffered the years long enough to grow hateful of their cause, but he was certainly beginning to grow bored with only one depressing aim in life. He had loathed his immortality for a long time now, but the possibilities it presented were soon nesting in the back of his mind. Young and intelligent Michael knew there was more he could do than just lounge around the manor, waiting for an attacked. They lived constantly on guard and he wanted to create a place for them that was different – and so with the Vampire’s generous funds, Michael was permitted to become an entrepreneur.
Taking on the surname Hunter, Michael built the Underworld nightclub in the beating heart of Manchester. Over several years of hit and miss it eventually flourished, attracting Michael’s desired crowd of beautiful humans. Michael had made a name for him, albeit one shrouded in rumour. As he became more elusive and infamous, the more exclusive and popular the Underworld grew. It soon provided the Vampires with a constant flow of human donors, some willing, some not. The purpose of the club could not be kept a secret from the underbelly of society, but the last thing Michael would permit it to be was a battle ground between the Vampires, Lycans, Malkavians and newly interfering government agents. First and foremost it was a safe house for Vampires, and Michael made sure it was common knowledge that it had its defences – a silver-laced sprinkler system for the Lycans, power prohibiting electrical impulses for the Malkavians, and ultraviolet strobe lights could also be triggered if he deemed the Vampires were getting too big for their boots. Michael’s choices became controversial, some saying he was creating unnecessary tension by forcing them to mingle without their abilities, but Michael was only interested in the sanctity of his business. Through a few insider jokes among the Vampires, Michael’s nickname – the Prince of Light – became what he was known to those who did not know his full identity.
Michael now lives rather comfortably among the Vampires. He has no yet forgotten the pain Tristan caused him, or the terrible murder of his sweet Kohana, but he is making up for it as best he can…