Name: Dragomir Forgách
Age: 507
Birthday: 17th of November, 1509
Gender: Male
Career: Bouncer / Mercenary / Hired Muscle
Appearance Description:
Let's get this out of the way first. Dragomir is not human. Notably so. He's got fingers, toes, two legs and two arms. He walks and talks and dresses himself, but nobody could mistake him for human. He is a tall, bald figure. His skin is a slightly blue-tinted hue of white. Blood vessels and veins protrude clearly against his pale skin. His eyes are pure black with no pupils to be found, his nose is moreso a small bump with a pair of snake-like slits on it and his ears extend far longer than they should, large and pointy. Every last one of his yellow teeth ends in a point. There is no way in hell Dragomir could ever pass for a human being.
If one is able to get over his alarming appearance, the second thing most probably notice about Dragomir is how plain large he is. He stands at about 6'6", with a decidedly very muscular build. His shoulders are broad, his arms are thick and his chest is decidedly barrel-like. Everywhere you look, there's swelling, wiry muscle with very little body fat. He's a big guy, plain and simple. His hands are calloused from hard work and he shows an ample collection of various scars all over his body.
Dragomir usually dresses himself simply, picking out whatever will fit him. A black sleeveless shirt and a pair of ripped, used jeans suits him just fine. He's not much for restrictive clothing and if he has to dress up, he dons soft, flowing cloths reminiscent of his noble heritage. He hates suits and prefers not to wear shoes. He does occasionally wear jewelry though, often one or two golden earrings in one of his elongated ears. He also has a replica of his old ceremonial plate armor. It's rare to see him wear it, but he does keep it in serviceable condition. In a similar manner, he keeps a medieval two-handed longsword about. It's not uncommon to see it strapped on his back.
Personality Description: Dragomir's entire philosophy can be summed up in one simple sentence: "Everything ends". He has lived for a long time, has seen countless wars, kingdoms and empires crumble, the rise and fall of heroes. Nothing really seems to stick, death is inevitable for all things, which has resulted in a fair bit of melancholy. He doesn't sulk, nor does he complain, but he rather seems rather lazy and indifferent. He has accepted that things will go on without him or anyone else making any long-lasting impact that won't be forgotten in a hundred years, let alone a thousand. Thus, he prefers to simply drift through the years, watching the seasons pass and doing whatever he needs to survive at any given moment. He's selfish, but he sees no reason not to be. Any goodwill he puts forth will certainly be gone and forgotten tomorrow, won't it?
He's not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. Sure, he's no bag of bricks, but he's no genius either. It can take him a fair while to figure out riddles and puzzles and it's not exactly hard to outsmart him. He's also rather easy to manipulate, perhaps moreso out of a lack of concern for what's going on around him than any real stupidity. If you offer Dragomir some kind of reward and tell him to do something, chances are that he'll do it with the same kind of sleepy indifference that he does everything else, as long as it's not at obvious risk for him. He has a rather solid sense of risk versus reward.
There's a sense of lethargy in everything Dragomir does. He often sees no reason to hurry, taking ample time to do pretty much everything and conserving as much energy as possible. He often gives off the impression of being sluggish or clumsy as a result, which makes him lashing out with surprising speed all the more unexpected when he does act. No, Dragomir simply sees no reason to put more effort into anything than he has to. Life goes on, after all, and even if he misses a chance or two he has a literal eternity worth of time to capture another opportunity. Everything will sort itself out in time, and sure as the sun sets tomorrow, everything eventually ends.
Powers: Dragomir is a vampire. To be precise, he's a vampire of the "Nosferatu" or "Orlok-Type", as far as most supernatural scholars are concerned. As such, his undead nature grants him a number of boons.
Vampiric Physiology
As one of the undead, Dragomir does not age and can in theory persist forever if nothing kills him. Additionally, his undead nature makes it so that he does not need to breathe, eat, drink (with the obvious exception) or sleep (though the sun does lull him into a kind of comatose, trance-like state, which gets harder and harder to resist the higher up in the sky the sun is and fades upon sunset). Additionally, he suffers no ill effects from poisons or diseases and virtually cannot get fatigued or tire. He does not bleed (has no pulse for it), has very dulled pain receptors and does not truly suffer from wounds in the same manner as most beings do. After all, say he is stabbed by a knife. It punctures a lung and cuts up his stomach. Well, he doesn't really need to eat or breathe anyway, so why would he care? These traits make him a remarkable juggernaut. The only part of his body he truly needs is his heart, as is noted below.
In addition to this incredible endurance, Dragomir's vampire body also allows for superhuman strength. He bends iron bars, smashes through stone walls, leaps over buildings in a single bound and wields his large longsword with one hand. Considering how his body works, he doesn't really need to worry about hurting himself pulling off these stunts either, letting him manage some ridiculous feats indeed.
Though these abilities usually suffice well enough on their own, Dragomir has also picked up something called blood augmentation over the years. By rapidly burning the supernatural lifeforce his body has stored (thus necessitating feeding much sooner), Dragomir can both heal wounds and further increase his already remarkable muscle strength. "Blood healing" is a fast and simple process, and is capable of shutting wounds, mending broken bones and even replacing large chunks of his body, such as limbs or internal organs. The more mass the body has to generate, the more energy it takes to heal. While Dragomir does not truly need this for continued survival, it keeps his body in working condition and ensures optimal ability when he needs it. Enhanced strength, meanwhile, is the stuff legends are written about. With some expenditure of life energy, Dragomir can rip apart sheets of steel, throw cars and leap across the city with little issue. Every such burst of strength is its own separate boost, and a single blood augmentation only increases his strength for a few seconds. Normally, these seconds are more than enough.
Drawbacks:
It's not all roses and terrifying supernatural prowess, though. Dragomir's vampire body does come with a fair share of weaknesses. For one, there's that whole "comatose during the day" thing. Yeah, that's not a joke. Upon sunrise, Dragomir finds it increasingly difficult to stay awake, until he is inevitably pulled into a slumber which lasts until sunset. During this time period, nothing can wake him. At all. He's for all intents and purposes the corpse he's supposed to be, just a lot uglier.
Not that he'd want to be in the sun in the first place. Sunlight, to the surprise of absolutely no one, burns Dragomir. Badly. He sizzles, smokes and blisters before his skin breaks open into horrid burn wounds. Unlike most damage Dragomir suffers, these burns are extremely painful to him and they are enough to send him into a panic after just a few seconds of exposure. The sun eats away at his flesh, the charred ashes falling off at a rapid pace. A solid three to five minutes in the sun is enough to permanently kill him. Additionally, he cannot heal these burns with blood augmentation, but must instead wait as his undead body recovers from its near-destruction. This can take anything from a week to three months, depending on how long he was exposed. Natural fire has a similar effect on him and he will instinctively avoid it.
Dragomir also needs to drink blood regularly. Duh, right? Normally, an amount as low as 5oz will keep him sustained for two to three nights, but he's going to need a lot more if he utilizes blood augmentation to any notable degree. Fresh blood is best, ideally directly from the would-be donor, but any blood kept in a reasonable condition will suffice. Once consumed, the blood is instantly broken down on the way down and the inherent supernatural life energy is transferred to and, as far as Dragomir understands, stored in his heart, which allows him to sustain his undead condition. If he would go without food or overuse blood augmentation, he enters a form of feeding trance where he makes an animalistic pursuit for the nearest suitable source of blood, which he then consumes. If he ended up starving enough to remain in this state for a full night, he would permanently die instead of falling into slumber that sunrise. It should be noted that he can consume other foods and drinks, but they invariably taste dry, bland and unfulfilling to him, not to mention that any other food does absolutely nothing for him from a survival perspective.
The only way to truly kill Dragomir is to burn his heart. Any other wounds, he can recover from. Even if his heart is pulled out of his body, that body would die, but a new one would grow around the heart itself over a period of a week or so, identical to the old one. Fire or sunlight does not matter, but his heart has to be burned to ash. If this happens, the undead curse comes to an end and Dragomir's remains cannot be revived a second time by any known method.
Necromancy
A trick Dragomir picked up during his undead campaigns, he is able to use the stored life energy in himself to raise temporary undead servants. Obviously, this takes a lot of energy out of him and he's guaranteed to need a drink soon afterwards, but it can be done. He can only have a maximum of ten minions raised at once with his current strength and he normally stores enough life energy to raise two human-sized critters before needing a refill. The minions raised in this way are obviously inhuman and completely mindless, existing only to follow their master's commands. Unlike Dragomir, who can still pass for some kind of monster, these ghouls are nothing but zombies, shambling and often skeletal. They share their creator's aversion to fire and sunlight and are reduced to corpses once more upon sunrise. If Dragomir wants to keep them around, he has to raise them again the following night.
His most recurring undead servant is an old warhorse that he used during the late 1500s. When raised, it looks like a bony black stallion, skin occasionally broken open to show rotten flesh or bone. White, milky eyes and cold snorting breaths mark its existence. It is however both large and strong enough to carry Dragomir's weight, even when armored. When not in use, its bones are stored in a large coffin at his residence.
Biography: Dragomir was born into the noble house of Forgách in the Kingdom of Hungary, a cold winter 1509. As a child, a dark-haired but bright-eyed thing not even comparable to what he is today, what he wanted to be more than anything else was a knight. Fighting for his king on horseback, representing his house. Of course, as a nobleborn son in medieval Europe, he did see his wish through. Hungary was already in war with the Ottomans at the time and he was eager to prove himself in war against the invaders. As history would have it, it didn't take long before he got that chance.
Recently declared a knight, seventeen-year-old Dragomir listened to King Louis II's call to arms, gathering together to make a stand against Great Sultan Suleiman. The Hungarian forces gathered to defend their nation, which had been on a notable decline already, near Mohács.
Of course, as is known today, the Hungarian forces did not stand a chance. They were utterly trounced, Dragomir still remembers that battle well. He did the best that he could among the cavalry, striking down enemy soldiers one after another. He was eventually struck down, though, collapsing among his fellow warriors on the muddy, bloody ground. He felt his life drain out of his body, he knew that his army had ready lost.
...And that would have been the end of it, had he not gotten back up a few days later and walked away.
Truth be told, Dragomir doesn't know why he ended up the way he is and not someone else. Or why he was the only one, as far as he could tell, among the soldiers who decided to just not stay dead. He didn't look fully monstrous then, only a lot paler than before, with bloodshot eyes. He slowly transformed over the following years and it took him a rough century to become what he is now. He became a vampyr, an undead monster preying on the living to sustain his all too long existence. He left Hungary sometime during this period, it no longer had anything to offer him. Instead, he became a wandering mercenary. He served in Prussia, France, Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. Even the Ottomans used his services at some points. He traveled by horse, keeping his armor on as often as he was able. He preyed on smallfolk and enemy soldiers, draining them dry in the dead of night. It didn't take long for him to grow from depression to acceptance and he found a place for this new him in a rapidly changing world.
As the world continued to modernize itself, so did Dragomir. He served multiple sides during the world wars, mostly in covert battles arranged by the supernaturally knowledgeable few. When there were no wars to fight in, he found his place on the streets. He acted legbreaker and hired muscle, he fought in gang wars and performed assassinations. Violence was the only real thing Dragomir knew, so he always managed to find the places where those talents were useful. He was a criminal, yes, but honestly, were any of his sins going to matter in a hundred years?
It was mostly curiosity that made him sneak on a ship heading for Manta Carlos. Rumors about an island for... Entities like himself. Maybe he could find people that he could relate to, perhaps even an explanation for his condition. A light of hope was lit inside him, the first of its kind in centuries. Maybe this would be something good. Maybe that hope could actually last and turn into something better still?
...Nah. Who was he kidding?
Everything ends.
Additional Information: Speaks English, French, German, Italian, Hungarian, Turkish and Spanish, with varying levels of competence.
Dragomir is completely asexual and aromantic, libido and potential for such feelings long gone. He's also completely sterile, for that matter. That said, he has been developing some kind of instinctual need for progeny as of the last couple centuries. Thing is, he doesn't even know if his... Condition can be transmitted.
Age: 507
Birthday: 17th of November, 1509
Gender: Male
Career: Bouncer / Mercenary / Hired Muscle
Appearance Description:
Let's get this out of the way first. Dragomir is not human. Notably so. He's got fingers, toes, two legs and two arms. He walks and talks and dresses himself, but nobody could mistake him for human. He is a tall, bald figure. His skin is a slightly blue-tinted hue of white. Blood vessels and veins protrude clearly against his pale skin. His eyes are pure black with no pupils to be found, his nose is moreso a small bump with a pair of snake-like slits on it and his ears extend far longer than they should, large and pointy. Every last one of his yellow teeth ends in a point. There is no way in hell Dragomir could ever pass for a human being.
If one is able to get over his alarming appearance, the second thing most probably notice about Dragomir is how plain large he is. He stands at about 6'6", with a decidedly very muscular build. His shoulders are broad, his arms are thick and his chest is decidedly barrel-like. Everywhere you look, there's swelling, wiry muscle with very little body fat. He's a big guy, plain and simple. His hands are calloused from hard work and he shows an ample collection of various scars all over his body.
Dragomir usually dresses himself simply, picking out whatever will fit him. A black sleeveless shirt and a pair of ripped, used jeans suits him just fine. He's not much for restrictive clothing and if he has to dress up, he dons soft, flowing cloths reminiscent of his noble heritage. He hates suits and prefers not to wear shoes. He does occasionally wear jewelry though, often one or two golden earrings in one of his elongated ears. He also has a replica of his old ceremonial plate armor. It's rare to see him wear it, but he does keep it in serviceable condition. In a similar manner, he keeps a medieval two-handed longsword about. It's not uncommon to see it strapped on his back.
Personality Description: Dragomir's entire philosophy can be summed up in one simple sentence: "Everything ends". He has lived for a long time, has seen countless wars, kingdoms and empires crumble, the rise and fall of heroes. Nothing really seems to stick, death is inevitable for all things, which has resulted in a fair bit of melancholy. He doesn't sulk, nor does he complain, but he rather seems rather lazy and indifferent. He has accepted that things will go on without him or anyone else making any long-lasting impact that won't be forgotten in a hundred years, let alone a thousand. Thus, he prefers to simply drift through the years, watching the seasons pass and doing whatever he needs to survive at any given moment. He's selfish, but he sees no reason not to be. Any goodwill he puts forth will certainly be gone and forgotten tomorrow, won't it?
He's not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. Sure, he's no bag of bricks, but he's no genius either. It can take him a fair while to figure out riddles and puzzles and it's not exactly hard to outsmart him. He's also rather easy to manipulate, perhaps moreso out of a lack of concern for what's going on around him than any real stupidity. If you offer Dragomir some kind of reward and tell him to do something, chances are that he'll do it with the same kind of sleepy indifference that he does everything else, as long as it's not at obvious risk for him. He has a rather solid sense of risk versus reward.
There's a sense of lethargy in everything Dragomir does. He often sees no reason to hurry, taking ample time to do pretty much everything and conserving as much energy as possible. He often gives off the impression of being sluggish or clumsy as a result, which makes him lashing out with surprising speed all the more unexpected when he does act. No, Dragomir simply sees no reason to put more effort into anything than he has to. Life goes on, after all, and even if he misses a chance or two he has a literal eternity worth of time to capture another opportunity. Everything will sort itself out in time, and sure as the sun sets tomorrow, everything eventually ends.
Powers: Dragomir is a vampire. To be precise, he's a vampire of the "Nosferatu" or "Orlok-Type", as far as most supernatural scholars are concerned. As such, his undead nature grants him a number of boons.
Vampiric Physiology
As one of the undead, Dragomir does not age and can in theory persist forever if nothing kills him. Additionally, his undead nature makes it so that he does not need to breathe, eat, drink (with the obvious exception) or sleep (though the sun does lull him into a kind of comatose, trance-like state, which gets harder and harder to resist the higher up in the sky the sun is and fades upon sunset). Additionally, he suffers no ill effects from poisons or diseases and virtually cannot get fatigued or tire. He does not bleed (has no pulse for it), has very dulled pain receptors and does not truly suffer from wounds in the same manner as most beings do. After all, say he is stabbed by a knife. It punctures a lung and cuts up his stomach. Well, he doesn't really need to eat or breathe anyway, so why would he care? These traits make him a remarkable juggernaut. The only part of his body he truly needs is his heart, as is noted below.
In addition to this incredible endurance, Dragomir's vampire body also allows for superhuman strength. He bends iron bars, smashes through stone walls, leaps over buildings in a single bound and wields his large longsword with one hand. Considering how his body works, he doesn't really need to worry about hurting himself pulling off these stunts either, letting him manage some ridiculous feats indeed.
Though these abilities usually suffice well enough on their own, Dragomir has also picked up something called blood augmentation over the years. By rapidly burning the supernatural lifeforce his body has stored (thus necessitating feeding much sooner), Dragomir can both heal wounds and further increase his already remarkable muscle strength. "Blood healing" is a fast and simple process, and is capable of shutting wounds, mending broken bones and even replacing large chunks of his body, such as limbs or internal organs. The more mass the body has to generate, the more energy it takes to heal. While Dragomir does not truly need this for continued survival, it keeps his body in working condition and ensures optimal ability when he needs it. Enhanced strength, meanwhile, is the stuff legends are written about. With some expenditure of life energy, Dragomir can rip apart sheets of steel, throw cars and leap across the city with little issue. Every such burst of strength is its own separate boost, and a single blood augmentation only increases his strength for a few seconds. Normally, these seconds are more than enough.
Drawbacks:
It's not all roses and terrifying supernatural prowess, though. Dragomir's vampire body does come with a fair share of weaknesses. For one, there's that whole "comatose during the day" thing. Yeah, that's not a joke. Upon sunrise, Dragomir finds it increasingly difficult to stay awake, until he is inevitably pulled into a slumber which lasts until sunset. During this time period, nothing can wake him. At all. He's for all intents and purposes the corpse he's supposed to be, just a lot uglier.
Not that he'd want to be in the sun in the first place. Sunlight, to the surprise of absolutely no one, burns Dragomir. Badly. He sizzles, smokes and blisters before his skin breaks open into horrid burn wounds. Unlike most damage Dragomir suffers, these burns are extremely painful to him and they are enough to send him into a panic after just a few seconds of exposure. The sun eats away at his flesh, the charred ashes falling off at a rapid pace. A solid three to five minutes in the sun is enough to permanently kill him. Additionally, he cannot heal these burns with blood augmentation, but must instead wait as his undead body recovers from its near-destruction. This can take anything from a week to three months, depending on how long he was exposed. Natural fire has a similar effect on him and he will instinctively avoid it.
Dragomir also needs to drink blood regularly. Duh, right? Normally, an amount as low as 5oz will keep him sustained for two to three nights, but he's going to need a lot more if he utilizes blood augmentation to any notable degree. Fresh blood is best, ideally directly from the would-be donor, but any blood kept in a reasonable condition will suffice. Once consumed, the blood is instantly broken down on the way down and the inherent supernatural life energy is transferred to and, as far as Dragomir understands, stored in his heart, which allows him to sustain his undead condition. If he would go without food or overuse blood augmentation, he enters a form of feeding trance where he makes an animalistic pursuit for the nearest suitable source of blood, which he then consumes. If he ended up starving enough to remain in this state for a full night, he would permanently die instead of falling into slumber that sunrise. It should be noted that he can consume other foods and drinks, but they invariably taste dry, bland and unfulfilling to him, not to mention that any other food does absolutely nothing for him from a survival perspective.
The only way to truly kill Dragomir is to burn his heart. Any other wounds, he can recover from. Even if his heart is pulled out of his body, that body would die, but a new one would grow around the heart itself over a period of a week or so, identical to the old one. Fire or sunlight does not matter, but his heart has to be burned to ash. If this happens, the undead curse comes to an end and Dragomir's remains cannot be revived a second time by any known method.
Necromancy
A trick Dragomir picked up during his undead campaigns, he is able to use the stored life energy in himself to raise temporary undead servants. Obviously, this takes a lot of energy out of him and he's guaranteed to need a drink soon afterwards, but it can be done. He can only have a maximum of ten minions raised at once with his current strength and he normally stores enough life energy to raise two human-sized critters before needing a refill. The minions raised in this way are obviously inhuman and completely mindless, existing only to follow their master's commands. Unlike Dragomir, who can still pass for some kind of monster, these ghouls are nothing but zombies, shambling and often skeletal. They share their creator's aversion to fire and sunlight and are reduced to corpses once more upon sunrise. If Dragomir wants to keep them around, he has to raise them again the following night.
His most recurring undead servant is an old warhorse that he used during the late 1500s. When raised, it looks like a bony black stallion, skin occasionally broken open to show rotten flesh or bone. White, milky eyes and cold snorting breaths mark its existence. It is however both large and strong enough to carry Dragomir's weight, even when armored. When not in use, its bones are stored in a large coffin at his residence.
Biography: Dragomir was born into the noble house of Forgách in the Kingdom of Hungary, a cold winter 1509. As a child, a dark-haired but bright-eyed thing not even comparable to what he is today, what he wanted to be more than anything else was a knight. Fighting for his king on horseback, representing his house. Of course, as a nobleborn son in medieval Europe, he did see his wish through. Hungary was already in war with the Ottomans at the time and he was eager to prove himself in war against the invaders. As history would have it, it didn't take long before he got that chance.
Recently declared a knight, seventeen-year-old Dragomir listened to King Louis II's call to arms, gathering together to make a stand against Great Sultan Suleiman. The Hungarian forces gathered to defend their nation, which had been on a notable decline already, near Mohács.
Of course, as is known today, the Hungarian forces did not stand a chance. They were utterly trounced, Dragomir still remembers that battle well. He did the best that he could among the cavalry, striking down enemy soldiers one after another. He was eventually struck down, though, collapsing among his fellow warriors on the muddy, bloody ground. He felt his life drain out of his body, he knew that his army had ready lost.
...And that would have been the end of it, had he not gotten back up a few days later and walked away.
Truth be told, Dragomir doesn't know why he ended up the way he is and not someone else. Or why he was the only one, as far as he could tell, among the soldiers who decided to just not stay dead. He didn't look fully monstrous then, only a lot paler than before, with bloodshot eyes. He slowly transformed over the following years and it took him a rough century to become what he is now. He became a vampyr, an undead monster preying on the living to sustain his all too long existence. He left Hungary sometime during this period, it no longer had anything to offer him. Instead, he became a wandering mercenary. He served in Prussia, France, Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. Even the Ottomans used his services at some points. He traveled by horse, keeping his armor on as often as he was able. He preyed on smallfolk and enemy soldiers, draining them dry in the dead of night. It didn't take long for him to grow from depression to acceptance and he found a place for this new him in a rapidly changing world.
As the world continued to modernize itself, so did Dragomir. He served multiple sides during the world wars, mostly in covert battles arranged by the supernaturally knowledgeable few. When there were no wars to fight in, he found his place on the streets. He acted legbreaker and hired muscle, he fought in gang wars and performed assassinations. Violence was the only real thing Dragomir knew, so he always managed to find the places where those talents were useful. He was a criminal, yes, but honestly, were any of his sins going to matter in a hundred years?
It was mostly curiosity that made him sneak on a ship heading for Manta Carlos. Rumors about an island for... Entities like himself. Maybe he could find people that he could relate to, perhaps even an explanation for his condition. A light of hope was lit inside him, the first of its kind in centuries. Maybe this would be something good. Maybe that hope could actually last and turn into something better still?
...Nah. Who was he kidding?
Everything ends.
Additional Information: Speaks English, French, German, Italian, Hungarian, Turkish and Spanish, with varying levels of competence.
Dragomir is completely asexual and aromantic, libido and potential for such feelings long gone. He's also completely sterile, for that matter. That said, he has been developing some kind of instinctual need for progeny as of the last couple centuries. Thing is, he doesn't even know if his... Condition can be transmitted.
