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OOC INFORMATION.

NAME: Em.

CONTACT: melodramatics or DM.

AGE: 30+.

OTHER CHARACTERS: N/A.

IC INFORMATION.

BASICS

CHARACTER NAME: Louis de Pointe du Lac.

CANON: The Vampire Chronicles (books).

CANON POINT: Post-Queen of the Damned.

AGE: 200+, appears 25.

BACKGROUND

HISTORY: Wiki.

PERSONALITY:

What impression does your character give when meeting someone for the first time? How does the first impression differ from your character’s true nature?

To most people, Louis appears to be a polite, thoughtful young man with a sensitive, poetic disposition. He tends to be rather somber, given to wistfulness and melancholy, but there's a bruised idealism just beneath it — the longing for things to be better, the sense that they could be, if only someone knew how to make it right. He's prone to monologues, he enjoys philosophical debate, and can be monumentally stubborn when challenged. Though he is an eternal introvert, Louis is deeply compassionate, and when he is interested in someone, his attention is complete and absolute, the kind of listener that anyone would want.

But beneath that is the monster. Louis's compassion directly conflicts with his vampire nature; he has to kill to survive, and he has no illusions about what this means for his soul. Louis refuses to select his victims by any method, appalled by the idea of passing judgment upon humans and labeling some more deserving of death. However, this moral code makes Louis utterly merciless in his feeding — he kills without regard for age or sex or will to live, only taking victims once his hunger is too great to resist.

This ruthlessness comes as a shock to people who were drawn in by his gentle, soft-spoken demeanor. The truth is that although Louis abhors violence, he is excellent at it, and believing he's already damned, he has very little to lose. And when pushed to his limits, Louis is capable of devastating vengeance, and he will feel no guilt at all about destroying those rare few who he believes are even worse than himself.

What are some of your character's regrets? How is your character impacted by them?

( cw: brief reference to suicide )

It was regret that first led Louis to become a vampire. Louis's younger brother Paul died tragically. Louis and Paul had a bitter argument, and immediately after leaving the room, Paul took a deadly fall down the stairs. Louis was devastated, and though he didn't know whether the fall was an accident or intentional, he felt entirely responsible. He fell into a deep depression, becoming passively suicidal, drinking heavily and acting recklessly in the hopes that someone else would kill him.

Instead, a vampire found him. Lestat offered Louis immortality and companionship, and half out of a desire for self-destruction, half out of a longing to find meaning in the world, Louis accepted. He regretted this immediately. He had no natural instinct for killing, and was appalled by what vampires had to do to survive.

The next century was a cascade of regrets for Louis. He regretted allowing Lestat to turn Claudia, a five-year-old girl, into a vampire; though Louis loved her deeply, he felt responsible for every life she took. Eventually Claudia's resentment grew, and she attempted to kill Lestat; Louis was paralyzed by his split loyalties, and allowed it to happen, and spent the next decade miserably regretting his inaction. And it goes on.

Without recounting the rest of the novel (Interview with the Vampire is essentially Louis confessing his sins), Louis eventually comes to realize that his greatest flaw is his passivity, and by refusing to compromise his own morality, he has allowed evil things to happen again and again. Louis is, and always will be, burdened by regret — his guilt is too much a part of him to ever allow him to forgive himself.

What are your character’s fears? How do they hinder or challenge your character?

Louis's greatest fear is that he is beyond redemption — and he believes it to be true. He has killed thousands of people, and he believes that it is evil to take even one human life. Though his faith in God is deeply shaken, Louis's Catholic roots run deep, and the concepts of salvation and damnation are essential to his worldview. Even if Heaven and Hell are no longer literal for him, he believes strongly in good and evil, and he has no illusions when it comes to himself. This fatalistic worldview is a self-fulfilling one, and Louis is trapped in it, unable to imagine any better way to live.

Related to this is his fear of his vampire nature. Louis doesn't know the true limits of his powers, because he refuses to explore what he might be capable of. Several older, more powerful vampires have offered him their blood, which would increase his strength and make him less vulnerable, and perhaps even give him abilities such as flight or mind-reading. However, Louis has no interest in becoming stronger, afraid of losing touch with what little humanity remains in him.


INVENTORY: N/A.

POWERS

SKILLS/ABILITIES: Louis is a vampire, albeit a relatively weak one. He shies away from exploring his powers, so even he isn't certain how much of his weakness is innate and how much is by choice.

→ His physical abilities are several times greater than that of a human. His speed, strength, and reflexes are enough to break iron chains, scale buildings, and make easy prey of a healthy adult man, but they're nothing compared to what a vampire of his age should be capable of.
→ He is immortal, which in this case means that he will never age, and can heal from nearly any injury with enough time and blood. He can't regrow limbs, but he could reattach one if he had help. (See Weaknesses for more.)
→ Louis cannot read minds or hear thoughts like most vampires, but his heightened senses (and natural attunement to humans as prey) make him very emotionally perceptive. He can spellbind others, but only accidentally, and only to the point of very brief infatuation. He doesn't enjoy it. (This would be opt-in and plotted, of course!)
→ Technically Louis can create other vampires (the process is much more complicated than just a bite) but Louis regrets the experience so much that he would rather die than do it again, so it's incredibly unlikely to come up.

NERFING: Canon is extremely vague regarding Louis's powers in particular, so I'm winging it a bit here re: limits. I'm not interested in flexing, so let me know if I need to dial anything back!

→ His strength still exceeds that of a human, but it's lessened; he's no longer able to easily break iron chains with his hands. For example, he could lift a car enough to help someone stuck under it, but couldn't actually pick it up.
→ His senses are still more acute than a human's would be, but dulled — comparable to a cat in his sense of smell and hearing.
→ His healing will be much slower than he's used to. Minor injuries like cuts and bruises will heal overnight instead of instantly; more significant ones, such as knife wounds or broken limbs, could take days to weeks to fully heal. All healing will require a steady diet of blood.

WEAKNESSES:

→Vampires fall into the "death sleep" from dawn to dusk, a catatonic state from which they cannot be awakened. They will instinctively burrow into the nearest dark place they can find, and their bodies will reflexively defend themselves if someone stumbles upon their hiding place.
→Fire and sunlight will both reduce vampires to ashes.
→Complete destruction of the brain or heart would also be fatal. (Canon is a bit unclear on this point, but I'm going to say yes for RP purposes, at least for Louis.)

SAMPLES.

TDM toplevel, TDM thread, Folkmore TDM

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