Abilities/Flaws/Weaknesses

Antonio is a vampire. In his world, this means something very different than it would in most other realities. He was never human. Was never turned. He was born, just like any human would be. He grew, as a vampire, and in essence, has always been one. As a vampire, he is capable of super-human speed, agility, can heal faster, though over several days, and can see in nearly complete darkness.

Aside from the abilities afforded him by his very nature, Antonio is a very skilled conversationalist and a businessman. He’s also a very gifted architect and artist. His other skills also include fencing, horsemanship, and sculpting. His past has given him an almost sixth sense when it comes to impending danger, and he’s very good at avoiding it.

Antonio would fall victim to any bullet, fire, train, etc that would kill any other living creature, as he is alive and breathing. He’s just as vulnerable to wounds and wounding as well. He does have superhuman reflexes, speed, and strength, but not resilience. He can catch various diseases, mostly those borne of the blood, and most strains of virus and bacterium that any members of the ape family were susceptible to. His one, singular weakness is ultra-violet radiation. That produced by light-bulbs, aside from tanning beds, isn’t enough to cause him any harm. The light of the sun, however, causes a chemical reaction in his blood that results in the production of cyanide. If exposed longer than a minute or two, the poison builds up enough to make him physically ill. Any longer would result in death.

Aside from physical weaknesses to the sun, Antonio himself has an almost phobic view of it. When he was 25, the equivalent of 16 years of age to his kind, the Inquisition came to the city of Madrid. It was then, watching from a shaded window hidden in plain view, he saw his mother, dragged kicking and screaming from their home, die in agony at the hands of the sun. Of course, it makes perfect sense that any creature affected in such a way by anything would be wary of the thing in question, but Antonio’s avoidance of the sun borders on Obsessive/Compulsive.

Over half the world’s vampire population was wiped out by the Black Death, and half of the remainder by the Inquisition; a situation they’ve never recovered from, which can be attributed to their extremely long reproduction time. A female vampire only goes into cycle once every ten years or so. It has been estimated that roughly 800 vampires survived the Inquisition at all. As a result of this, in his 450 years of life, he’s met a handful of his own kind. Because of this, he’s convinced his destiny is to remain alone, and usually attempts to remain distant from other for fear of losing them.

He has a weakness for a woman with a bubbly personality, though, and it has been his downfall on more than one occasion. He becomes obsessed rather easily, to a point that could border on stalking. Once he gets something or someone ‘in his blood’ his mind will only focus on the object of that obsession. Work, friends, and hobbies fall to the wayside until his curiosity and/or fascination are satisfied.

History/Background

Antonio was born in 1467 to a very ecstatic mother and father. It was very rare, even in those times, for two vampires to find one another, let alone fall in love and be lucky enough to have a child. His father was an architect of great renown whose strictly nocturnal meetings were scrutinized, but tolerated in light of his designing genius. Antonio began apprenticing under him at the age of 13. He learned the intricacies of arithmetic, geometry, and the like. He fell in love with his father’s trade.

One cold, October night in 1492, his father left for a business meeting and never returned. His mother, fretting for her husband’s life combed the city for him, but was forced to return because the dawn was fast approaching. The mob came just after dawn. His mother told him to hide, he complied. They burst into their home and dragged her out, out into the sun. Out into death. He watched from a shaded window as she died, convulsing, screaming, being beaten with clubs until she stopped moving.

He still can’t accurately recall how he fled the house, avoiding the sun, though he can recall the nights thereafter, sleeping in caves to avoid the killing rays, subsisting on animals. He fled east. He avoided towns for the most part, but when he reached the City of Venice, his life was changed forever. He met a man named Leonardo, a gifted anatomist, mathematician, sculptor, and painter. He befriended the lost and lonely Antonio almost immediately, fascinated with his very nature. He learned many invaluable lessons from Leonardo: how to hide one’s actions in plain sight, how angles can be convinced to work with rather than against gravity to create structures that seem to defy gravity. Leonardo’s most important lesson, though, was that, regardless of the evils that plague all of society, there existed, still, genuinely good people, and good friends. Leonardo reawakened Antonio’s faith, both in God and in humanity.

After the death of Leonardo da Vinci, Antonio spent the next 490 years staying below the radar. He hired actors, using funds from the fortune his father’s supposed death had caused him, to play himself during daylight hours, allowing him to work as an architect, and gain quite a bit of renown, under various pseudonyms, throughout the centuries. He has spent time in China, France, India, England, Scotland, and Japan, and is nearly fluent in all the languages spoken in those parts. After the American Revolution, he relocated to the newly created United States, drawn by the land of promise just like so many immigrants. A new country needed buildings, he reasoned, and he wasn’t mistaken. Since, he has lived in New Amsterdam, which has sense been renamed New York, getting lost in the constant stream of newcomers.

Personality

On the outside, Antonio usually comes off as quiet, reserved, and deep-thinking. He always weighs the effect of every word before he speaks it, knowing that, though the sword may cut and the arrow fly just as true, words hold a power beyond the physical. Language was a gift from God to Adam and Eve, the one knowledge he trusted to them without the penalty of sin. Rarely does he say something pointless or shallow, keeping those thoughts to himself. He believes words should be used to get to a point, not to dodge one. Having lived so long, he’s made a hobby of studying people. He loves meeting new people, truly believing that an individual’s personality is a collection of experiences.

Architecture, in all its evolutions, is his greatest passion, and he spends weeks walking the streets of every new city he moves to, learning it’s angles, avenues, and secret places, feeling that a man is only as strong as the place he calls home. He’s never been held captive by one living place in a City, though, and often moves from place to place in order to be immersed in every aspect of a city’s personality, from its buildings to its citizenry.

To summarize, Antonio can be, in conversations, just about whatever the listener(s) require for communication to progress, having spoken to so many different types of people over the years. Personally, he prefers deep, invocative topics such as theology and philosophy, but can hold his own in almost any conversation, unless it is the topic of popular culture. He’s never really paid much attention to television or films, though he does have a voracious appetite for literature and art, and will actually read a graphic novel if the storyline intrigues him enough. He appreciates a story that gives him a situation to dissect, an aspect of society to examine, or a captivating character to intrigue him. He also takes a lot of solace in the music of the Beatles, seeing them as philosophers in their own rights.

He considers his closest friends his family, and never hides anything from them. The sudden deaths of his parents made him realize how tenuous lives can be, and cherishes what time he is allowed to spend with them like gems. His parents instilled in him a deep love and faith in God, and his faith in Him has never wavered. Even as he fled Madrid, running from the Inquisition, he saw them as lambs that had lost the way. Never did he blame the Lord for their misguidance. He has a very deep understanding that he is not a creature of evil, and believes that He would never let him believe he was good and just if he were not.

The word of God guides many of his actions and beliefs. He doesn’t believe he is good, just, and selfless because the Lord commands, but that he is a creature of God, and so he is God’s image in all things.