[CHAR] Buffy The Vampire Slayer

[Ruby]

• Watcher: Ash Pierce, Librarian at Washington Lee High School (GM NPC)
• Slayer: Emelia 'Emy' Vance (GM NPC)
• Scoobies:
  
  • Casey Harrison (@Helo)
  • Blaine Krycek (@Sergei Romanov)
  • "Dana Griese" (@Plank Sinatra)
  • "Victoria Cross" (@Krayzikk)

[Ruby]

Name: Emelia 'Emy' Vance
Age: 17
Specialty: Slayer
Bio:

Emelia Vance never remembers the same normal as most people do. Even when life was at it's most stable, she still found herself moving every three to four years, a new home she could never truly get settled in to have it be a home. Her mother was the only true constant in her life with her Army father deploying to this theater of operations or that theater of operations seemingly every other year, and on the years he wasn't he was preoccupied with travel for training, or conferences, or "war games" with a group of countries that were never held in her backyard.

A few years in Korea, a few years in Japan, years in Germany, years in Texas, a stint in Puerto Rico, Washington D.C. It could be exhausting, and it could also be quite the adventure; Emelia has done more traveling, and experienced more, than nearly anyone else her age. She speaks a handful of languages, is as aware of global events and trends as most global news correspondants. She wouldn't trade most of that in for anything in the world...but she cannot escape her desire to actually put down roots. To know a place as a home, not just a waystation in life.

In Puerto Rico her mother was diagnosed with cancer. The Army allowed her father to be reassigned to Washington D.C. in a Congressional military liason capacity so his wife could get the best possible care in the most stable environment possible. Somehow that made the entire situation worse; Emelia and her mother had always been a tight knit team, their primary source of support and comfort through the stresses of being military dependents. Now Emelia's father was almost always present; while good in theory, in practice it was pretty fucking strange and destabilizing for both mother and daughter. Still, Emelia backed away, letting husband and wife reconnect with what little time her mother had left.

A time in her life of impossible stress was further complicated by puberty, by being in normal public schools for the first time in forever, and by being 15. Just on it's own all of that was really difficult to navigate and stay above the waterline about. Throw in the impending devestation that was the loss of her mother, the complication of having to deal with a father she barely knew who was trying way too hard, and Emelia was past the point of being done. Yet she handled it, sort of. She could never quite figure out the "right" fashion choices and got tired of being considered either out of date for wearing the wrong style of jeans, or considered a dyke for not caring what she looked like. All in an age when some tights and a tank top SHOULD have been enough, but apparently it wasn't. Fuck Becky Johnson and her super judgey friends.

Just saying.

But then the unavoidable came, and Emelia's mother died. As ready as she could've been for it, nothing else had ever quite hurt like that. Suddenly Emelia was alone. Her father tried, but she wouldn't let him. In part because she just couldn't, she just didn't have the emotional maturity to process it all AND do right by him, and in part because she was already losing her mind. Her mother's death had coincided with nightmares, with daydreams so vivid, so real, her doctor believed she was having passive seizures.

She wasn't. Emelia was simply starting the process of becoming the Slayer.

A title that explained nothing and meant nothing to her, yet she constantly found herself scribbling it in the margins of notebooks, even writing it in lipstick on her mirror with a giant fucking question mark behind it. "Slayer?" What was it? What the fuck did it mean? Was she just losing her mind? Was she just crazy? Her therapist thought so, her doctor thought so, her school counselor thought so. Fabricated reality to escape into instead of dealing with the trauma and pain of losing her mother--that was the clinical line on Emelia Vance.

Her father called it bullshit, and pulled his daughter out of that public school, placing her into a small girl's only private highschool. They changed doctors, changed therapists. Anyone who didn't try to HELP his daughter was quickly dismissed, and replaced. He refused to not believe something was going on with his daughter, even if the Slayer stuff and all the nightmares were imagined. Even if they weren't real, institutionalizing her would solve nothing, and help Emelia not at all. But try as he might, her father couldn't alone win this war.

Not when the monsters of nightmares and fiction were the enemy.

They found her; the first a Scottish sounding vampire who claimed to have killed "half a hundred" monster hunters in his time, but never a Slayer. He wanted to kill a Slayer. In a weird way, it made Emelia happy to hear this monster of fiction turned real calling her--HER!--a Slayer. It meant it wasn't all in her head. It meant, somewhere, somehow, it was real. And she knew he was real; she had the bruises and lacerations he provided her to prove it. You couldn't imagine blood spilled like that. And then...instinct took over, and Emelia Vance found herself going all Neo on the Scottish vampire's bitch ass.

A man named Prescott stalked her, but it was hard to get to a girl that lived in the most secure gated community in the world--a US Army base. Turns out he wasn't a stalker, so he claimed, but instead a "Watcher." He was there to help her. He was there to train her. Prescott was brave, Prescott was wise, Prescott was dedicated to her...and Prescott died. Impaled by a second vampire that found her, an older, stronger one that spoke with a Russian accent and said he had killed "stronger, better, Slayers" than her.

In the end the difference was a tactical flashlight she'd nabbed from her father on "blind the fucker" mode and quick thinking on her part that saved her and ended the second "Slayer hunter"--but in the process half her small girl's only private school was trashed. And worse, the vampire never showed up on camera. So no one believed her, and even her father seemed out of patience. He accepted "twilight tour" orders, his last duty station before retirement, to a small Army training base just outside Washington, Missouri. Washington wasn't as big as D.C., it was a great school district, and a steady town that nothing big ever happened in outside some gang violence and meth heads. So they moved again, this time living off base, in an actual house, one that Emelia helped pick out, one her father promised they wouldn't have to leave.

A home, he said, if she could make it one without burning it down or trashing it.

Challenge accepted.

[Helo]

Casey

Name: Casey Harrison

Age: 17



Specialty: Sarcasm, making jokes at inappropriate time, able to consume inhuman amounts of caffeine, decent gamer, extensive knowledge of alien, paranormal, and government conspiracies… wait, you meant useful specialties didn’t you? In that case computer skills, hacking, and combat skills.

Bio: Casey, like his parents before him, was born and raised in Washington and the furthest from town he's ever been was a couple trips to Kansas City. His parents got divorced when he was five and after that he lived with his dad, which was fine with him as his dad was the man and his mom just never got it together, after the divorce his mom just sort of disappeared. His dad was a computer programmer and total scifi and comic geek; passions he shared with his son, as well as outdoor skills and a love of things like camping and fishing. Casey loved watching movies and hanging out with his dad, learning about computers, playing video games and overall, he had a happy childhood. He was always kind of a weird kid, never anywhere close to being one of the “cool” kids but he always had a couple good friends and he was fine with that. His father made enough money to get by but they always lived in a small house on the rougher side of town.

In elementary school Casey was a chubby kid and he got picked on a lot. The summer before middle school, after having watched all the Rocky and Karate Kid movies with his dad, he decided he wanted to learn how to defend himself. He started taking boxing classes, and kick boxing later on as well, and eventual he got into shape and began fighting back. After that kids stopped picking on him as much, at least to his face. He did well enough in school, still had a few close friends, and spent a lot of time on the weird side of the internet. Watching scifi and horror movies with his dad had cultivated a strong interest in the otherworldly and paranormal. He’d spend hours online and eventually in the dark web reading about the occult, the covered-up existence of demons, alien encounters, and any conspiracy theory that sounded even remotely plausible. Truth be told though, he never really believed in vampires, werewolves, and demons. Now, aliens and government conspiracies sure, but magic and monsters just seemed a bit out there even for him.

That is until his freshmen year when his father died. The official story was a ruled an animal attack but when Casey hacked into the coroner’s system and read the files, he learned otherwise. His father had been found in the woods, completely exsanguinated, and the only marks on the body were two small holes on the side of his neck. He couldn’t stop thinking about vampires, he delved even deeper into the recesses of the dark web looking for any information he could find about vampires. He spent a lot of time at the Magic Cauldron trying to find books on them and spending what money he had from his summer job on books, holy water, stakes, and even a sword. Every chance he got he was telling people his father was killed by a vampire, that there were real monsters in their town but no one wanted to listen. He became more of outsider at school, and most people thought he was crazy. His aunt and uncle, who he ended up living with after his dad’s death, briefly had him sent to an institution, thinking his father’s death had caused him to have a mental breakdown. There he learned to stop talking about it and when he got out he kept his knowledge to himself.

Shortly after that he went out hunting on his own. It was easy for him to sneak out, his aunt and uncle could really care less about him, so long as he wasn’t making them look bad. He wandered all around Washington armed with some holy water and a stake and it wasn’t too long before he found what he was looking for. A vampire attacked him, beat him up pretty bad, and the thing bit him too. Casey smashed a bottle of holy water over the vampire’s head, which luckily worked just like the message boards had said, and finally managed to take the upper hand in the fight. The staking part was harder than he’d thought but he managed and the thing ‘poofed’ into dust. Since then he’s managed to find a few others hunt with.

Life with his aunt and uncle has been anything but easy. His uncle is both a loser and a drunk, and usually a mean one, and his aunt is more concerned with pills than whatever Casey’s up to, they basically took him in because it means extra money from the government. When he lived with his dad he only ever had summer jobs just to earn a little extra spending money but after he died and then after the whole stint in looney bin, he managed to pester the owner of The Magic Cauldron into giving him a job there, cleaning and helping customers a few days a week either after school or on the weekends. He’s had a couple altercations with his uncle before the drunk learned that Casey wasn’t going to take it and so he mostly leaves him alone. Casey spends as little time with them, in their small trailer, as possible, camping out in the woods when the weather permits, staying at the mall or coffee shop until they close, and staying with friends on occasion. He loves camping out in the woods, having time alone and practicing swordsmanship and with the small crossbow he bought, only downside is there’s no wifi in the woods or he’d move there permanently. Casey doesn’t like to bring up the bad parts about his life in front of others and if he does it’s only in a joking manner. Humor has been his main coping mechanism and he’d rather make those around him laugh than have them feel sorry for him. He also hates vampires, demons, werewolves, and any other non-human thing out there with a strong passion. Witches however, as long as they’re white hats of course, are fine by him and would probably make great allies.

[Sergei Romanov]

Blaine

Blaine "Alatar" Krycek


17


Blaine's specialty is the magical in every sense of the word. Being blessed with a photographic memory this heavily adds on to his knowledge of the arcane all be it the information that was actually true. He considers himself a rather skilled warlock and well probably the smartest person to ever live in town and probably the the only good looking smartest guy in town... but most definitely not vain in anyway. An even more so he does not in anyway feel the need to explain things no one cares about.


Blaine if you asked him, was dropped off on earth as a baby by a race of super intelligent aliens, but in reality he was born in Washington to a rather colorful set of parents. Blaines father was a simple mechanic and his mother was just a stay at home wife who often had misgivings about her life. So naturally when Blaine became smarter then both of his parents combined by age seven there was just a bit of turmoil within his family life. The sorted truth was that Blaines family did not understand that he had a photographic memory and more so often thought of him as a freak of nature. This lead to a lot of his younger years being completely alone and ostracized by his own family. By time he was flying through school Blaine had an incredibly low opinion of himself and more often then not he became the ridicule of various bullies who tortured him day in and day out. Blaines only real true source of comfort was when he watched movies, glorious knights and beautiful princess's and even more so the powerful and highly intelligent wizards. He would often fantasize about being a mighty wizard, about being some important to the world instead of the nobody that he truly was, these fantasies quickly turned him into even more of a freak by his parents whom still could not understand him.

Things stayed the same never changing at least until Blaine turned twelve and his life completely changed if not over night. Due to what locals considered a freak murder both of his parents were killed, there bodies were found in a crypt, both together side by side with no clear cause of death. After his parents death Blaines life went down hill, with no real relatives at least that anyone knew of he became a ward of the state and was bounced around short term facilities where no matter how he may have tried he could just never truly fit in. It was in an around this time that Blaine began his first steps into becoming a warlock, he never knew it but he had an acute ability to feel things, to feel energies all around him and this alone started him on his path. Everyday for months he dove into readings on magic, on occult's, on spells, on lore and mythology and various other sources of information pertaining to magic. In the end the sad truth was he wanted so desperately to find a way to bring his parents back to life like in the movies, they were not perfect but he still loved them. Blaine spent every waking moment either in the library or in the local magic shop, and poured all his time into doing actual magic.

For the longest time Blaine was truly unable to preform any feat of magic, hard as he tried he just didn't know how regardless of much knowledge he obtained and with his life on the verge of absolute collapse it was near impossible. It wasn't until he was fourteen that a man came up to him in the magic shop and offered to help him with his magic. Even though he was weary and even more so confused at how the man seemed to know him, he went with him having nowhere else or no one else to go to. In time he learned this man in fact had recently moved to Washington after hearing of the supernatural events in town was a trying to become a Warlock himself and often would buy supplies at the local magic shop and noticed Blaine there a lot. Blaine quickly became attached to the man and soon enough considered him like a father alleviating a lot of the pain he felt and things finally started to turn around for Blaine. They both worked diligently together, Blaine learned much from the man and in small ways he returned the favor which lead to both of them obtaining small successes here and there and at the same time his own life improved dramatically. Before he knew it he had made a couple good friends and he finally found a place within the world where he actually fit in. With a new found confidence the once exile of town forged ahead and started to become somebody, however the worst pain of his life was yet to come.

Blaine was fifteen when he lost the man who became his father, like his mother and father before his mentor was found dead in the same crypt one morning and as before the death was never truly known. Angry and alone again Blaine vowed to put an end to whoever killed his mentor and his parents, he set out alone the next night to the crypt intent on finding some tell tale sign of the person who murdered the ones he loved. He was not however prepared for the aspect of finding the one who killed them or rather the creature that had killed them that same night. As it would turn out the vampire knew Blaine quite well, the truth quickly became apparent as Blaine faced his father whom told him of his turning and then the killing of his mother and the faking of his own death. An then the final killing of Blaines mentor to cement the torment. Blaine would of died, should have died as he was woefully unprepared for what he would face, but on that night however facing the very thing that destroyed his life over and over all the anger he felt released and his will to live with perhaps a lot of luck spurred him to fight.

The battle was fairly one sided and Blaine turned out to be no match for the vampire, badly beaten and defeated by his overpowered father death was certain. It was merely luck that Blaines father chose not to immediately kill him but ridicule him one last time before he killed him. This small window gave Blaine the moment he needed to grab a nearby piece of broken wood before he was wrenched off the ground by the throat. His father whom was overconfident was unaware of this and never saw the sharp piece of wood coming and Blaine slammed it into his chest as he fell back to the ground his father turning to dust. After it was all said an done Blaine returned to his mentors home in town with the intent of leaving town for good and not returning, however after finding a letter addressed to him from his mentor he remained in that same house and resumed his life once more but this time with a new goal instead. Blaine would take up the fight and would continue even deeper into his magical training, he would become not only stronger in magic but he would make his body stronger and he would fight this evil plague that diseased his town and spare others from the same pain he felt. Eventually with his own pain passing, life resumed a form of normal and in memory of his first and only mentor Blaine kept walking ahead stronger then ever and more confident then ever before to one day become a powerful Warlock and fulfill not only his dream but the dream of the man who set him on the right path.

[Plank Sinatra]

Name: "Dana Griese" ([???] Kawaguchi / "Kawaguchi-chan")
Age: 18
Specialty: Hired muscle - originally in America on a protective basis, Dana relishes a good fight, be it at staking distance, the length of a blade, or from down the barrel of a gun. Outside of combat, she takes on the role of fashion police, often serving as an unwanted and caustic guide to fashion.
Bio: The girl who would adopt the identity of Dana Griese began life under quite a different name, halfway across the world in the Hyōgo Prefecture capital of Kobe. Her parents were affluent members of society in a country suffering under the weight of a dozen societal problems - with a tech magnate for a father and a mother who had earned herself a safe career as a fixer at a law firm that had been heavily associated with the hometown Yamaguchi-gumi going back to the Japan bubble of the 1980s, Kawaguchi was all but guaranteed a life of privilege in Japan's sixth-largest city.

But the prospect of a safe, privileged life quite understandably failed to appeal to a young girl whose family dabbled in the cutthroat worlds of business and mob law. From a young age, Dana was impulsive and outspoken in a conservative, staid Japanese culture, traits which quickly earned the charismatic rich girl a hushed reputation as a delinquent in the making. Eager to avoid the pitfalls of having a little street fighter or gangster of their own for a daughter, Kawaguchi's parents directed her towards various interests, a few of which stuck - rhythm games, fostering a childhood passion for dance, were one such hobby that the competitive Kawaguchi adopted with vigor. More seriously, the young girl took an interest in high fashion, and even found herself pursuing several brief jobs on both ends of a fashion photographer's camera. It seemed that she had found her calling until one fateful ride home on a late-night shuttle.

What began as a mere surprised annoyance - saying Japanese men's penchant for harassment on board a subway was an issue would be putting it mildly - when Kawaguchi felt herself being groped quickly grew serious when she turned around to swat at her attacker. The young girl, not exactly a weakling, found herself tossed halfway across the shuttle for her trouble, and barely managed to scramble out of the car and into the familiar streets of Kobe. She found herself pursued for several blocks before managing to hide among some of the port city's fish crates, breaking off large, irregular chunks of wood to defend herself in lieu of any weapons. Regaining her courage, Kawaguchi leaped onto her demonic assailant's back as it passed, doing her damnedest to bludgeon its head into a pulp with her fishy-scented improvised weaponry with negligible effects. She landed the kill, but it was ignonimous and accidental; the creature had reached up behind it and thrown Kawaguchi off its shoulders, and when she rose up to whirl around and regain her bearings she had accidentally speared it through its heart with the ugly, jagged end of a plank.

After enjoying a few nights of recovery and therapeutic Dance Dance Revolution, Kawaguchi decided that whatever had attacked her had been demonic in nature - and that it was, in turn, dispatching such evil creatures who would prey on young girls was in the nature of a champion. Her mother's Yakuza contacts, of all people, were the bearers of her first partial answers in the realm of the occult and demonology, and with the information her mother helped her glean she grew into an able, if not exactly finessed, vampire killer around the Prefecture over the course of her time as a first-year and second-year student. She even ended up getting the hang of wielding a stake, although she preferred the more universally fatal method of a sweeping decapitation over piercing the vampire's heart.

However, through all of this, Kawaguchi's restless streak never dulled, and as her quarry grew sparse around Kobe she began to realize that these creatures, and perhaps worse, lurked elsewhere in the world, untamed, without champions such as herself to spell their end. Any requests to leave behind the doldrums of her school career were rebuffed coolly by her mother until after her seventeenth birthday, when she took an absence from school (not a rare occurrence in her life) on her mother's insistence (which was much more rare) to meet with her mother at her law firm. To Kawaguchi's surprise - and, soon, to her glee - her mother informed her that she was being entrusted with a very special assignment, one that could not be trusted to some simple mob grunt or a lesser fixer with a law degree.

Kawaguchi would be serving as a glorified bodyguard for some eerie pale-skinned quasi-foreigner, who had fallen afoul of some sort of supernatural chicanery of a type which Kawaguchi knew nothing of and cared even less for. What mattered was that this odd creature was a ticket across the ocean, to the United States, and that fulfilling her mother's wishes and protecting her would surely result in meeting newer and more disgusting monsters to dispatch. She accepted the chance given to her greedily, and the two girls departed for America for a quiet location named Washington, Missouri, where a fresh pair of identities as Victoria Cross and Dana Griese awaited them. Her initial nonchalance and ambivalence towards her charge quickly gave way to piqued interest when it appeared that "Victoria" possessed some demonology acumen of her own, and she accepted her guard duty with even more zeal than she had before in the hopes of accompanying her ward on some of her hunts.

Sure enough, in the eighteen months since they had left Kobe for Washington (a town which, to much confusion and consternation on Dana's part, had no monuments, history, boutiques or undead Senators) Victoria Cross proved herself to be quite the weirdness magnet, joining up with a group of other American misfits in an attempt to protect the town and its citizens from all sorts of vampires, demons, and other oddities.

And, in keeping with both of her life's primary directives, the artist formerly known as Kawaguchi was alongside her young mistress for every hunt.

[Krayzikk]

Victoria Cross

Name: Victoria Cross
Age: 18
Appearance:

[+]

On the taller side, Victoria has almost waist length black hair that contrasts with her naturally pale complexion. Her hazel eyes can look a little odd under the right lighting, and with her complexion and demeanor only add to the air of detachment. She usually dresses well, albeit casually, and most of the accessories on her person have some manner of emergency use if cornered by a supernatural foe.

Specialty: Victoria is gifted at dealing with supernatural foes personally, through both research, and as she might dryly remark, “the power of violence”. Rather than face threats through brute force or charge in without prior knowledge, she firmly believes that pre-planning is critical. To this end she researches her foes tirelessly, and would rather invoke the better part of valor than charge into a fight that she does not understand. Her martial prowess is considerable, both with her weapons of choice and her bare hands. Necessities of being a potentially high profile target.

Bio: Victoria Cross is the daughter of a reasonably successful news producer who’s job keeps him away from home almost all of the time. She moved to Washington about eighteen months ago from further east, and her transcripts reflect the grades of a gifted student. She’s friendly enough, though quiet and a little distant, but not much of a talker when it comes to her past. She describes a fairly average childhood with a hobby for martial arts, but tends to be fairly vague when it comes to specifics.

Her fight against the things going bump in the night extends almost to when she moved into the apartments near the top of the Halifax building, as does her part time job at Halifax Coffee.

[The Red Bear]

Adam Avery

Name: Adam Avery

Age: 17

Appearance: Adam is one who spends most of his days, out and about and anywhere but his own house and it shows. Between the messy hair which he has to keep adjusting on the go and the black marks under his eyes, it’s rather clear that he stays busy. He’ll be hesitant to tell you about what it is that he actually does, mind you but traces of dirt and occasionally stranger stains can be found on his clothing. He isn’t a very large individual, he stands at a pretty average height and his build is about the one you’d expect from one who stays on the move but doesn’t actually spend any time working out; thin yet lacking any significant muscle. The feature of every single attire he chooses to make his own on any given day is his signature green military jacket. Usually he will wear band shirts for rather old rock bands from the seventies and eighties but don’t you dare call him a hipster.

Adam is a slightly peculiar fellow, he’s got a tendency to look over his shoulder and sometimes get lost staring off at things that other people would find rather mundane. However when you get the guy talking, good luck getting him to stop. He always talks with his hands, using them to emphasize everything he is saying. Of course, perhaps the most important of all his habits is his phone. Indeed, he has a smart phone which he rarely neglects to hold in his hand and while most would see others giggle and smile at whatever they are doing on their phone, Adam’s face remains perfectly serious and stern and oddly… Calculating? He is up to something on that phone of his.

Specialty: So let’s cut the fluff and move on to the crunch. What do you want? Serial keys for video games? You got it. Alcohol even though you’re underage? You’re covered. Maybe you’re feeling a little 420-friendly? That’s fine, Adam won’t judge. Whatever you need, he can get through an extended and strange network of connections that involves friends, relatives and business associates. Of course, the things I have mentioned are only the small-fry stuff he has access to. Things of a less… Mundane nature that are much more dangerous are also a part of Mr. Avery’s repertoire, all you ever need do is ask. Oh also he has a black van and even a license to drive it!

Bio: Adam Avery was was born to a strange family in Washington, Missouri. Few actually trusted anyone with the Avery surname because of their secretive and strange nature. The family had garnered themselves a reputation, some accounts would paint them as religious nuts and a secret cult. Others painted them as a crime family. Some claimed they were a coven of witches but how did this tarnished reputation even come to be? Most those who were an Avery were home-schooled and often strayed away from anyone from outside the family’s social circles. In fact Adam himself was home-schooled until he reached his early teens but why all the secrecy you might wonder? The Averys were a branch of an ancient family of demon hunters who were blessed to have a Slayer among their family tree(it just so happened that said slayer was Adam’s grandmother, he never got to meet her sadly.) The Averys were considered a warrior branch of a much larger family whose name eludes most tongues. Even Adam himself struggles to recall the name of the much larger ‘family’.

He was strictly schooled in his home by his family and most of his social life revolved around his siblings and whatever relatives came to visit at the time but after he became twelve, he insisted to his family that he would be sent to a public school. While they were hesitant at first, pressure and suspicion from the public had become too much to handle. He was well-versed on everything supernatural and strange but little was going to prepare him for what was considered by most to be a ‘normal’ life. Everyone around him appeared to be ignorant to the unnatural side of the world while he witnessed mundane events from a different point of view. He was labelled a weirdo and was treated with much suspicion by his peers due to the name that the Avery family had earned themselves with their clandestine nature.

While the original reaction to Adam was originally hesitant and suspicious, Adam quickly managed to make himself a relatively notable individual thanks to his family’s connections and training. What started first as merely stealing some alcohol for his fellow classmates eventually turned into things of a much more serious nature. Adam found that he could capitalise on family connections, becoming the middle-man to many transactions between many people. It got him involved with a bad crowd, sure but he was making himself the name as ‘the man’, he could get you what you needed and if he couldn’t, then he’d find a way to do it. He had a few entanglements with the law which got sorted through his parents who were anything but approving of the young Adam’s new lifestyle but attempts to get him under control failed more frequently as the boy grew older.

He enjoyed being the one everyone came to, gaining a unique sort of popularity instead of being isolated from all the social circles like the rest of his family. Despite the illusion he had created for himself for being the coolest kid in school, he failed to realize that many kids around him still did not precisely appreciate his presence. They treated him as more of a necessary evil because he could get them what they wanted but his shifty family and ‘connections’ so to speak made his fellow students fear him more. So even though they’d smile to him and label him the guy who could get anything, they would still whisper behind his back and keep their distance whenever he walked around.

Oh how ironic it turned out to be that despite the lessons taught by his family to hate the supernatural world, it was precisely the supernaturals that treated Adam in a manner that wasn’t hypocritical. In more than one instance did a witch approach seeking magical supplies or magical texts to get them started on their path to witchcraft. Along with other kinds of people who had some kind of ‘in’ into the supernatural world. You’ll be surprised to learn that it didn’t take long for the unnatural types to come flocking to Adam to get what they needed but being an Avery drew a certain type of crowd to someone. In the end, Adam’s closest and most regular ‘customers’ became the ones who were supernatural in one way or another, much to his family’s chagrin.

How did his family feel in the meantime? Pissed, expectedly. He had all but abandoned his studies to pick up the family legacy but there was little point to his family’s efforts. Regardless of his friendly treatment towards the world of the supernatural, Adam just did not have the killer instinct and fighting prowess that seemed to come to most Averys naturally. They tried to stop him and ground him and whatever was in their power to stop his association with the unsavory sorts but it was too little too late. Adam had become the go-to for many mundane as well as supernatural people for what they need. And whether they tried to forcibly stop him from doing what he did, someone would come along and get Adam out of his bind in order to get what they want.

So what happens now that Adam is close to graduating high school and becoming his own man? Well the responsibilities are piling up and Adam’s tensions with his family are greater than ever and they have made their threats to disown Adam but more than once Adam has called their bluff because they couldn’t just let a fellow Avery go. Not due to their morals however, but due to the main family’s teachings and rules. However, it’s starting to seem like the bigger, more serious family may get involved in disciplining Adam. More than once has Adam noticed shadowy figures stalking him from rooftops and cars tailing his ‘party van’.

[Blood Echoes]

Danny

Name: Danny McEllis

Age: 17

Specialty: Telekinesis and hardcore Dark Souls runs

Appearance:

Click for pic

At 5”9 and weighing only 120lbs, he's clearly not built for punching baddies to death, or even for bravely sprinting to safety. Really, there's nothing about him that stands out to any degree, except maybe his thick dreadlocked hair and bright blue eyes. He tries to make up for it with a pseudo-edgy style, but he lacks the kind of dedication to anti-fashion that someone really needs to pull that kind of thing off properly. He favours dark colours and shirts bought from Redbubble that reference obscure fandom jokes along with hard-wearing boots that have seen better days.

Bio: The kid's got a bad reputation. Ask any of his classmates and they'll tell you, that 'stuff' just seems to happen around Danny McEllis. People get hurt. Things get broken. Yet, other than skulking at the back of class and having a few scathing comments to say now and then again, he doesn't seem to actually do anything bad to anyone. He's got no history of bullying, never been suspended, rarely even catches detention. So what gives?

Well, you got to go back a way for that. Second grade is a good start.

Before that, Danny was just a shy kid that rarely spoke up and spent a lot of time daydreaming in class, doodling in textbooks instead of taking notes. He'd had a rough start to his schooling, being the kid whose mom had run off when he was a baby and whose dad was kind of distant and inattentive at times. Poor too, can't underestimate the effect that can have on a developing personality. Having some siblings would have helped, but he was an only child; he had a few friends and they played D&D very badly together on weekends, so he was doing okay.

Then, Garry Robeson threw a soccer ball straight into his face. Ha-ha funny, pick on the shy kid with thrift-store clothes, whatever. Thing is though, the ball ended up slamming into Garry's face instead. Broke his nose, made him cry, just like you might expect with stupid kids. The others there swore blind that the ball reversed direction mid-air without anyone touching it. Like it was magic, or something.

And well, it kind of was.

Okay, might be good to go back a bit further, before mom left and when Danny was still sleeping in a crib. Things moved around a lot, especially when he was upset. It's hard to get a good night's sleep when every time the kid cries, doors start slamming all over the house and things fall off of shelves. Maybe that had something to do with his mom leaving. The only person who could say anything about that is his dad, and he wasn't talking.

Actually, he didn't talk about anything much. A nice guy, mostly, though rather distant and maybe not well equipped for raising a son on his own. Just about every piece of advice the man has ever given amounts to “Ignore it and it'll go away,” or “Stop being weird,” or “You'll never get a job with a haircut like that.” Thing is, Danny likes his hair, problems usually get worse if you ignore them, and he can't exactly stop being 'weird' any more than he can stop having four fingers and a thumb on each hand.

'Weird' is such a loaded term, really. Doesn't tell you anything much about what kind of 'weird' you're dealing with. It probably isn't best suited to describe someone who can do magic. Or maybe it's not magic, it's just the fundamental forces of the universe that most of humankind hasn't gotten a handle on. Whatever you might call it, the kid could do it. As long as it meant moving things around without physically touching them, anyway. A shame, because being able to throw fireballs would be pretty cool, wouldn't it?

But anyway, second grade was the first time he really slipped up and let it out. His dad always said that everyone would hate him if they knew how 'weird' he was, and it turned out that he was kind of right about that. After that – well, it didn't really matter what he did, or didn't do. Any accident that befell anyone would magically be Danny's fault, whether he was even in the room at the time. That time that Jade Sinclair fell down the stairs and broke her leg? Danny McEllis did it. When the quarterback ran face-first into the goalpost in practice and bust his nose? Danny McEllis did it. When the heating broke down in January and it was just really, really cold for a week? Danny McEllis did it. Just hum the theme to The Omen when you see him, it's funny.

Yeah, sure.

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if he lived somewhere else. The whole place was always a little 'off'. Seemed like the kids could see what the adults couldn't, that things there weren't always rational and couldn't be explained by “It was just a wild animal attack” or “muggers” or “a really big bird did it.” Maybe in a different place the kids wouldn't have been so quick to assume literal magic shenanigans were afoot. Or maybe kids are just mean, wherever they are. How would he know? He's never lived anywhere else.

He went a bit off the rails after that. Not a lot, just the usual edgelord stuff. You know – being kind of an asshole to others, unfriendly and hard to get to know: Building up a protective wall between himself and the world. After all, Leah Jones farted once in homeroom in first grade and had been known as Gasser ever since – once a reputation sticks, you're done for. Might as well wear the mantle. At least there's some merit to being able to push an aggressive wannabe-bully clear across the room, it's hard to see how Gasser Jones gets any benefit for her 'talent'.

Thank god for the internet. Online he's known as LightningSpear and he makes tutorials for no-death runs in the Dark Souls games. He's written fanfiction about Solaire of Astoria and posted often-referenced theories on the Drangleic royals. He's even got a Patreon. Funny how it's easy to have literally thousands of followers and pseudo-friends when no one knows anything about him... None of them would probably ever believe that the friendly, talkative and fiercely loyal fandom geek was such a weirdo at school.

Well, okay, there are some kids at school who aren't so bad. But like with everyone else, it's probably only a matter of time until they leave too.

Right now, he's just waiting for highschool to finally end so he can do something else with his life. Not that he knows that that 'something' is going to be. It's best not to think too hard about how he's much too poor to go to college, and nowhere near bright enough for a scholarship. Best not to think about how he'll probably end up with a passing grade about good enough for a life of low-paid manual labour and no health insurance like his dad. Or about how it's pretty likely that he'll never leave Washington.

Notes: Danny hasn't been spending time fighting the supernatural, he is the supernatural. Or a small piece of it, at least. A fairly harmless one, unless you happen to be a cup on an unreasonably high shelf that is desperate to remain on an unreasonably high shelf. He has no interest in occultism or the like, since it's something he's just always had; like how a person who can speak Swedish doesn't spend time learning how to speak Swedish. He's got no real combat skills, outside of a particular sphere of gaming where he's a borderline savant. Despite being moody and generally projecting a neon sign that reads GO AWAY, at heart he's a nerdy kid who just really wants to have friends, so he's not half as unapproachable as he pretends to be.

[Ruby]

Name: Ash Pierce
Age: 41
Specialty: Librarian | Watcher
Bio:



Ashton Pierce comes from a different reality than most. The social elite of the East Coast; bloodlines that go back centuries, priviledge few can imagine. A life put in a pattern determined by the progenitor. Upon that dream like pattern the good son Ashton was awoken to the ugly and the sinful, to the real. Like many a dream turned nightmare there was a monster at the end of it. A monster that nearly killed Ashton but for the timely intervention of an English gent from a background not too dissimilar from Ashton's. A brief explanation from the gent became an obsession to Ashton. An obsession that cost him nearly everything, at first; inheritance, family connections, trust funds. All of it. In his desperation he gave in to obsession, and obsession took him in.

Ashton Pierce became a shadow of his former self, giving everything into his singular, narrow, focus. Fiction became his new reality; monsters, demons, magic, rituals, ancient languages long thought dead, now known to him as undead languages. Maybe they had died, but their function, their purpose, had survived death and become stronger for it. The gent came calling, the Watcher Council knew talent when they saw it--they knew one of their own affected by the calling. Within their ranks, within the training he was born for, Ashton became Ash, a transformation that went much further and deeper than names and skin. It was with the Council Archives that Ash discovered them; journals there was no accounting for. Text that was sharp, then fuzzy, then sharp again. Books that were heavier than a book ought to be, and then suddenly, almost as light as air. The journals of Rupert Giles.

Ash Pierce was charged with investigating the anomoly. Through a maze of clues and coincidence came the final piece of the puzzle: Rupert Giles himself. A man with no family, no history, no tether to this plane of reality. He was a shattered mess when Ash Pierce found him; mumbling about a girl, a Slayer, about vampires and demons and Hellmouths and the ends of all things. Ash returned Giles to the Watcher Council, and when he spoke shibboleth the Council accepted Rupert Giles as one of their own, one lost in time and space, planted upon them by chance or fate. One way or another, it was an opportunity, and resource, they could not pass it up. But while the Council would continue to explore Rupert Giles and those journals, they had other plans for Ash Pierce.

Namely...Emelia Vance.

Washington, Ohio's Washington Lee High School was need of a Librarian. A few favors called in by the Council, and the job was Ash's. He was now a High School Librarian; albeit one that was usually impeccably dressed and fashioned as befitted his birth, with a depth of intellect and knowledge unmatched by any academic within days drive. The Council was certain, through whatever mysterious means, that the girl would show up. In the meantime Mr. Pierce would establish himself and gather information on the town and it's less obvious going-ons. Every time something interesting came up, one of several teenagers were never far behind. It didn't take him long to determine their motivations, and their actions. He helped them however he could in ways just large enough to help, but small enough to escape their knowledge. It wasn't long until the Council was proven correct: the girl moved into town with her father. And not just any girl, but a Slayer. Suddenly Ash Pierce had a new obsession.

[Ruby]

WIP

Name: Crowe
Age: 180
Specialty: Big Bad
Bio:



WIP.

Mountain man turned Confederate soldier during the American Civil War turned renegade crusader turned vampire bad motherfucker. Possible associate of the Corinthian. A being of some pretty strange fucking ideas.