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Erik Osborne (Born/Given name Radimir [No Family Name]) is a vampire elder (aged over a millennium) who currently rules as Lord of the Ozark Mountain Clan in the Southern Midwest region of the USA. His territory of influence includes all of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and the lower half of Illinois. He is considered a fair and intelligent leader, though many of the vampires under his rule believe he has too soft-hearted an approach when it comes to dealing with humans. In Erik's opinion, humans can be quite entertaining when they are not causing too much trouble. It is better to keep them as allies than as enemies.
Personality: Erik radiates a quiet confidence that is often mistaken for haughty arrogance. In social settings, he holds himself aloft with an air of conceit. It is not unearned; he has reason to be proud. He was born a peasant and lived the majority of his human life as a slave, but through his own perseverance and striving, he has now managed to build an empire for himself out of nothing. As vampire elders go, he is still young, only just past the Millenia mark. Yet, he has already risen in the ranks among his peers to establish himself as a Lord over a clan he himself has created and christened.
He is ambitious, driven, and incredibly cunning. Good at biding his time, humbling himself where necessary while playing the long game. He is a master tactician who excels at pulling strings in unseen ways in order to steer circumstances to his favor. He is not, however, afraid to get his own hands dirty when the situation calls for it. He likes to have his way and he will employ any method in pursuit of his goals, no matter how vicious.
Though he is willing to employ cruel methods, he is also loath to do so when not absolutely necessary. He would much rather settle disputes with diplomacy than violence. His silver tongue is able to convince even some of the most combatant of adversaries to lay down arms and treat with him. His prowess in verbal sparring has earned him wide respect. It has also secured for him several powerful allies who help him maintain balance in his precarious new position as a Lord. His territory is bordered on all sides by other much older clans, thus is has taken skillful social maneuvering to keep himself in place.
While his outward-facing persona exudes confidence, power, and control, he is a far more sensitive and empathetic person in private. When left alone with his thoughts, he can tend to wax poetic on the nature of life, good, and evil, and ethics. Though, it is worth noting that many of his views are out of date with modern times. He is still a believer in chivalry and old-fashioned manners.
One thing that has remained true throughout all the centuries he has lived is that he is particularly fond of humans. He sometimes views himself as their dark defender. He will go out of his way to protect the most innocent among them, often donating discretely to children's charities, or to politicians/political movements that he feels are doing good work to raise up humanity. These actions he will not take credit for and will disavow if anyone attempts to call them out. He views it as a small atonement for the violent attitude he took in his early years of life when he killed humans for sport. The pointless waste of lives weighs heavily on his undead soul.
Many of his rivals point to his love of humanity as a weakness. But he firmly believes that the best way to stave off the inevitable death of personality (to stave off the hungry beast that resides in every vampire) is to continually attempt to empathize with and relate to the human experience. The fragility of mortal life is beautiful to him. He wants to hang on to his humanity as much as possible. The day in which he forgets forever what it is to love or feel compassion is the day when he no longer wishes to be a part of the world.
Brief history: [CW: slavery/DubCon] Erik was born in the late 10th century (977 AD) in Novgorodian lands. He, and his twin sister Lilian (Original name LUDMILA) were born into an impoverished family. They became orphans at the age of twelve. By age fourteen, they were on the verge of starvation with no other option than to sell themselves into slavery to a rich master.
They did not know at the time, but their master was a vampire in hiding. That vampire master kept them fed and sheltered in exchange for their services (often sexual) around the house, and blood. The twins thrived under the vampire's care. However, the land was in great conflict at the time. At the age of twenty-seven, during an attack on the vampire master's house, Erik was mortally wounded. In order to save his life, the vampire master forced Erik to drink his blood and become one of the undead. Lilian was so distraught by the idea of her twin brother becoming immortal without her, she begged to be made into a vampire alongside him. The master agreed and took both twins under his care as his new Younglings.
All three stayed together as a family for centuries, until their master was assassinated by a rival vampire amidst the heightened violence of the Russian Revolution. Erik and his sister fled the country going first to other parts of Europe before eventually immigrating to the United States of America. Once there, he made his way up the social ladder of vampire society while slowly gathering influence in an area of the county that had been overlooked by most elders as being 'unworthy' of attention. He amassed his power base and eventually, during the 1920s announced his intention to claim the Ozark Mountain region as a fully recognized clan. After some infighting between himself and the neighboring clan that controlled Chicago, Erik was able to prove himself, and he became the very first Lord of the southern Midwest region.
He ruled over his territory with his sister as a close advisor and heir for many decades, but trouble brewed between them as their differences in opinion over how humanity should be dealt with grew. Erik began to suspect she planned to overthrow him. However, that threat became moot on New Year's Eve of 2005 when she was killed by a human named Jonah Lewis. The human boy got lucky while defending himself from her attempts to feed on him. In the aftermath of his sister's death, Erik declared Jonah his human servant for the human's own protection. He renamed the young man Max Maximum and took him into his house. Now he lives an idyllic life with his Pet in an opulent manor set out of the way on Table Rock Lake in Branson, Missouri.
Powers and Abilities: Erik's specific vampire lore has certain unique rules listed below.
1.) He is immortal and mostly invulnerable. If he is injured (including stabbed in the heart/beheaded) it will hurt, but will not kill him. He will heal the damage over time, even re-grow limbs (though he requires a good supply of fresh blood for this process to succeed). The one exception is if his eyes are injured. Losing both eyes will result in making him mortal so that any new mortal injury will permanently kill him.
2.) He does not need to eat real food (he can’t taste it); drinking blood sustains him. Because of his age, he doesn’t need a lot of blood. The older a vampire gets, the less blood is required for the same sustenance. Note: I’d like his need for blood to be slightly increased as a way of forcing him to participate more.
3.) Usually, drugs/alcohol consumed directly will not affect him. However, drinking from someone who is intoxicated or drugged will confer those effects on him.
4.) He does not need sleep. He CAN sleep, but it’s dreamless and he becomes stiff and lifeless like a corpse when he does.
5.) He can shapeshift into animals and insects. He specializes in the form of a hawk, but can choose other animal forms at will (with some practice). It takes a lot of concentration/energy and he needs to be well-fed to maintain the transformation. Note: For simplicity, I will nerf this down to only being able to take hawk form.
6.) He has superhuman strength, super-speed, and heightened senses of smell, taste, and hearing. He can see perfectly in the dark.
7.) Sunlight does not kill him. His skin is sensitive to sun and prolonged exposure will easily cause sunburns and make his eyesight worse, but it won’t make him burst into flames.
8.) Holy symbols do not repel him. Garlic does not repel him. Holy water doesn’t harm him. He doesn’t need to sleep in a coffin or graveyard soil. He can cross any threshold uninvited without issue.
9.) The blood hunger in him is a separate beast-like personality that he is at constant war with/constantly maintaining control over. He can lose control of himself and get lost in a feeding frenzy if he goes too long without feeding on blood.
10.) His vampire blood has healing properties. Smearing his own blood on a wound (such as after feeding) will heal the wound almost instantly with no scarring. His bite/fangs, however, carry no venom of any kind.
11.) His bite does not instantly turn anyone into a vampire. To be turned, a person must be on the cusp of death and drink vampire blood.
12.) Blood bond. If he feeds a drop of his blood to a person who is not on the cusp of death, with the intention to form a blood bond (the intent is important) that person will gain special protection from Erik. He physically cannot harm a person protected by his blood bond. If anything he does would harm them, he will feel unbearable pain until he stops that action. This could include feeding on them if they are not consenting. The bond is permanent and can never be lifted. It is never taken lightly.
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