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What goes into an application
Basics
Character name: Rasmus Björklund
Character canon: old World of Darkness / Vampire: The Masquerade
Canon point: Night between the 12th/13th of December, 2000 (Finale of the Fair is Foul Gehenna scenario with Lilith winning)
Rasmus will enter the game briefly after having met final death. His dog Emil will have died at the same time for the same reasons (all vitae in the world perishing).
Age: 425 (looks like he is in his early twenties, though with an odd notion of age to it)
Gender: Male.
History
1. Life
Born in the North of Sweden as the third surviving son of a noble family in 1575. Went to Uppsala to study. Made friends with Leif through dogs. His family died of an epidemic, only his nephew Gustav survived. Moving in with Leif, he adopted Gustav.
2. Unlife
A while after he was embraced by Leif, Gustav was drunk dry by a Ventrue, Asger. The next centuries were spent plotting out Asger's demise. To this end, Rasmus eventually became sheriff of Stockholm. He enjoyed the position enough to try and keep it as long as possible after Asger died, right until the Gangrel left the Camarilla.
3. Gehenna
Rasmus became involved with the Camarilla again under the red eye and through that got pulled into the events around the final battle that took place in Stockholm. By the end of it, Lilith's faction won over Caine and two Antediluvians, vitae on Earth perished and Rasmus fell to dust. (Fair is Foul Gehenna scenario)
And in more detail:
Rasmus was born into a family of lower gentry in the North of Sweden as the third son who survived infancy, so he was kind of expendable from the get-go and it was no surprise when his parents sent him off to university in his late teens, unbeknownst to them exactly one century after the first Camarilla Conclave.
At first, he was miserable in Uppsala. The things that brought him the most joy weren't accessible anymore - the hunt, the kennels of his parents' house and the wide open lands to ride in. Instead, there was studying and dealing with the social circles of the city, both of which he could do well enough but didn't particularly enjoy. He'd been doing both since he was little due to his parents' station, even if they were country bumpkin nobility, but until now there had always been places to go to make up for it.
He had a hard time making actual friends, too: Drinking buddies he found easily, but the guys that he found interesting usually were too low-class for him to hang out with, and those of his own status or higher either didn't share his interests or looked down on him because he was from even further out in the sticks than them.
All of that changed when he met an only slightly older(-looking) man called Leif Einarrson who was of higher nobility and about as excited about dogs as Rasmus himself. Sure, he was a bit eccentric (and that also applied to some of his dogs), but Rasmus gladly put up with that in exchange for the access to Leif's close to twenty dogs, his horses... but as time passed almost even more for the easy companionship and the fun that the nightly hunts that Leif took him on brought, something that Rasmus had never considered before.
Considering Rasmus's canon, you might see where this is going. But it took a while. Leif was slow to make a decision in any direction, but then life (or rather, death), presented a perfect inroad: Almost all of Rasmus's family died of smallpox. The only survivor was a nephew of his, his most beloved brother's child. Knowing that the alternative was the boy being raised by an aunt who felt no love for his branch of the family, Rasmus immediately thought of adopting the boy himself. The issue was that he lacked the means to do so. Leif stepped in and offered that both Rasmus and his nephew, Gustav, stay with him, no strings attached but with the vague promise of helping out more in the future.
Rasmus, overjoyed, agreed and went to bring Gustav to Uppsala.
Leif, pleased, used the following months to befriend Gustav (which was quite easy, as the boy was overly trusting) and plant a paranoid thought in Rasmus's brain: What if he, Rasmus, died on Gustav, too? And then, when the thought started to grow into a panic, Leif extended an offer that would come as close to a guarantee of Rasmus not dying of an illness or other natural causes as anything could come. The child had odd bedtimes already, so it wouldn't make that much of a difference for him, right?
Again, Rasmus accepted. Leif gave him some words of advice, embraced him and immediately after picked up Gustav and took him to a human family some distance away, ostensibly because they had children of the same age who were currently given their first classes by a private tutor, so he could learn how to read with them. They stayed there over the winter while Rasmus figured out unlife. When they returned (Leif had stayed around somewhat to make sure that the Masquerade stayed intact, but never let Rasmus know about that), Rasmus was there to greet them, shaken but at peace with the situation. He missed daylight and food, still had trouble navigating human contacts when he only had the nights, and more, but he'd quickly gotten used to requiring human blood, likening it to having required meat for sustenance before. The lines of what animals we find acceptable to be used for food are arbitrary, aren't they?
The next years went by uneventfully. Rasmus learned more about what it meant to be a Gangrel and how to use his new abilities and deal with his weaknesses. Gustav grew and eventually turned nine. And then he died.
More specifically, someone drank him dry.
Rasmus didn't take well to this. At all. After the first rage had died down, he fell into a depression that edged into suicidal territory before long. Leif, having put work into Rasmus as his loyal offspring, fearing loss of face among his fellow Gangrel and being a certain degree of fond of Rasmus, poked at the issue until he found a solution. The solution was revenge. For the next couple of centuries, Rasmus's goal would be to find the vampire who had killed Gustav and obliterate them. But first, they needed to figure out who it was, and they didn't even have a lead.
Finding a lead to whoever it had been was Rasmus's main motivation for having Leif introduce him into the Camarilla. Nothing cropped up for a while, though, and when Sweden entered the Thirty Years War, Leif sent Rasmus off to do something fun instead. The next years Rasmus spent with an Uppsala based Brujah neonate from the same birth area (and thus serving in the same regiment), Nils Fahlgren, doing the equivalent of some frat boys' trip around Germany to drink all the alcohol and brawl with all the guys from that other stupid college. Neither of them met final death, and they had fun together, seeing the world and supporting Camarilla efforts against the Sabbat whereever the Swedish army went. And even if they didn't connect on more than a superficial level, and stayed that drinking buddies type of friends for all the centuries after. They often came together when Sweden was waging some major war again to poke around the conflict and Nils even moved to Stockholm when Rasmus did, but their relationship never progressed past superficial conversations even back home.
The main thing that Rasmus was doing throughout the next centuries was working his way into and up the Camarilla, seeing it grow and evolve around him. There were breaks and interruptions to this, because the Swedish Kindred kept having massive lupine problems and Leif and Rasmus were sidetracked by dealing with that time and time again, only existing on the fringes of the Camarilla for decades at a time sometimes - most Gangrel were independent and lived in areas that had even more issues with lupines than the cities, and while there weren't rules about such things, strictly, Leif was old, experienced and respected enough that any larger scale effort at fighting lupines would inevitable come to include him, and that automatically meant Rasmus, too. Sometime during these years, they relocated to Stockholm and in the early 20th century Rasmus assumed the position of Sheriff, something like the executive of the Prince of a given Dominion. It turned out that it was a job that he quite liked, and thus he stayed on it even after he had finally managed to take down the man that had killed Gustav.
Because Leif had found a Ventrue, Asger Pedersen, whose preying pattern fit Gustav to a T (Ventrue need very specific blood "donors") and who had been in Uppsala at the time in question, and after some going forth and back very cautiously they managed to confirm that it had really been him. Whatever Leif thought on the matter, Rasmus was elated and threw himself into the Camarilla machinations with abandon (at least as much abandon as caution and survival instincts allowed) and looked for a spot that would enable him to trip Asger. The Dane had long since moved to Stockholm for undeclared reasons, and thus this was the dominion in which Rasmus and Leif took up residence at that point. Using his eventually gained office of Sheriff, Rasmus kept an eye on Asger and kept tabs on him without raising suspicion, and managed to talk his Prince into being suspicious enough of the Dane to not allow him siring, ever. With Leif's help, he arranged for Asger to feel the need to do so anyway. He then gladly did his job and brought the Ventrue to judgement.
During these centuries, Leif and Rasmus formed a kind of co-dependency. Rasmus had been emotionally dependent on Leif from the start, but Leif came to depend on Rasmus for keeping him tied to the present, too. They gave each other purpose past their own survival, in a roundabout way, and trusted each other as much as any vampire possibly can trust another vampire. Leif might have been the one behind all of Rasmus's major decisions or goals, but Rasmus was also the one who sat at the centre of the web of Leif's machinations instead of being only a pawn in them.
When Clan Gangrel left the Camarilla, Rasmus resigned from his position almost immediately, and both him and Leif started to pull out of the sect. The reason for this was threefold: A growing unease with how the Camarilla responded to the situation, Rasmus's involvement with it long having served its initial purpose, and the realization that the lack of a justiciar would weaken their position within the sect and their remaining with the sect would weaken their standing within their clan - so they tried to leave before either could happen, but slowly enough to salvage a few things.
They narrowly avoided the door hitting them on the way out just because the house went up in figurative flames behind them: Rasmus's leave and some other trouble almost toppled the prince, who in turn only persisted because something else started to happen. At first, it was unclear what it was, but when elders panic, the whole house shakes. And they did panic.
It couldn't be the strange red comet that was approaching, or at least Rasmus doubted that ...until Leif was affected, suddenly turning into one of his animal forms mid-conversation. Rasmus, getting the distinct feeling that he would be next, contacted a man that he had worked with often before and whom he had always found to be a good partner in all kinds of matters: Mårten, keeper of the Elysium and a Nosferatu. They quickly pulled Nils, who had replaced Rasmus as the sheriff, into the mix as well, and then Killing, a Malkavian whom they had worked with before, too. Between the four of them and with some investigation they managed to confirm a suspicion: All elders malfunctioned in one way or the other.
Things got worse from there. The more time passed, the more Kindred were affected by those malfunctions - weakening blood and growing clan weaknesses. And something else rose too: Diablerie, the devouring of another Kindred by one of their own. Nils was obviously in the thick of investigating this, and he quickly came to involve Rasmus. Sure, the Gangrel was independent now, but he also had invaluable experience, something that was agreed on by primogen and prince enough to not hinder Rasmus's "employment". Meanwhile, Mårten and Killing encountered something in the sewers. Something powerful, that they weren't sure they had really scared off after. The sheriff pair, confirmed a number of cases of diablerie... and omitted one of them when they sent word back to the Prince. Because August, a neonate Ventrue with tale-telling newly acquired black streaks in his aura, was sheltering a young woman, Lyla, whose prophecies eerily matched Mårten and Killing's experiences, and she had more - and only trusted August. Taking her along, all five vampires decided to check out the second half of the prophecies.
They ran into a few traumatized Brujah on the way, and eventually found a club without guests - and a mirror that behaved strangely. Naturally, Killing decided to jump into it. Rasmus, having half expected this, grabbed for him, but instead of pulling the Malkavian back only managed to step through the portal which Killing had unwittingly opened. They landed themselves in the strangest and most frightening garden that they'd ever seen, and after some trials encountered ...someone. He didn't reveal himself, but explained to them that they were in the garden of Lilith, and urged them to join him in fighting her by sacrificing a young woman from Stockholm (whom they easily recognized as Lyla) in a ritual to defeat her. Otherwise, he claimed, the end of the world would be neigh, or at least the end of all Cainites, as Lilith was out to take revenge on Caine. Equipped with this knowledge, the two Kindred journeyed on and ran into an area that kept shifting in nightmarish horrors. In its middle, they found a woman who seemed to be at the centre of this and tried to calm her down. Neither Rasmus not his dogs succeeded, but Killing somehow managed to briefly pull her out of her craze because she thought that he was her brother - which sent her into a whole different mindset long and short enough for them not to die before a call reached her. Following her, they managed to return back to Stockholm.
Which was literally on fire. The rest of their coterie, including Lyla, had gone to investigate another vision, and run right into the arms of the Lasombra Antediluvian, who was quite happy about this unexpected gift, having considered the same ritual that the man in the garden suggested, just for his own gain. Lilith, to whom Lyla functioned as a kind of embodied avatar, intervened. Ungodly creatures from the depths of the ocean crawled up from the waters into which Stockholm is built, and (semi-)childless Antediluvians (like the woman who mistook Killing for her brother - the Malkav Antediluvian had a sister - which is why she was going to Stockholm now) that supported Lilith were heading in to rescue her. The guy from the garden joined the carnage, too, and was quickly consumed from within by the Tzimisce Antediluvian.
The commotion attracted Caine.
And everyone wanted a piece of him. Except for the coterie and Lyla, who were now reunited and had a short shouting match exchanging information and trying to hatch out a plan. In the end, nothing got coordinated: Nils tried to help out Caine directly, Rasmus and Killing tried to set up an impromptu ritual, aborted it and joined the fight as well, August lead Lyla to safety and Mårten secured their escape.
Caine, with a little help from his descendants, managed to defeat Tzimisce and Lilith's Antediluvians defeated Lasombra, and then the first vampire and the dark mother were facing each other down (drums in the distance...). Malkai used this moment to obliterate Caine while he wasn't paying attention.
And Rasmus, who was sitting next to Nils's body and a horribly transformed Killing, trying to heal himself up, noticed all strength leaving him and his age rushing in to catch up with his years. He saw Emil crumble to ashes before his eyes and under his hand as all vitae vanished from the world, taking his beloved ghoul with him. At the same time, his other ghouled dog shrank back to how she would look had she never been transformed. It only took a minute longer before Rasmus was gone, too, no more than ashes in the wind.
World
[Because trying to describe the whole of oWoD would take forever and the gamelines don't even always match up, I will limit myself to the vampire one here, centering on Northern Europe.]
Rasmus's world is a lot like our world around the millenium, at least as far as technology and what most humans think about everything else goes. It's just shittier - all the negative traits of the social and political structures of the human race are more pronounced and generally more rigid. It is also bigger than earth. There are various worlds or spaces beyond it. Rasmus world in a different sense - the one that he has been in contact with and that has a direct impact on his life is limited, though: He has only ever dealt with Earth directly and while he has been around, he never really left Europe (except for some excursions to the closer parts of Asia), and has spent most of his existence in northern Scandinavia. I'll focus on this second definition of "Rasmus's world".
Rasmus knows that other supernaturals exist (primarely he knows about "lupines", werewolves/garou, because he has been involved in run-ins and clashes with them, but that knowledge is one about the enemy and vampires don't actually know this enemy very well, as a rule), but what makes the main difference for him is the existence of vampires. Vampires have been among us for a very, very long time, and had their fingers in almost every historical event and development, using them for their intrigues that can span centuries and more.
Vampires live mostly in the cities, and where there used to be only a few, there are now many. It's getting seriously crowded. Rasmus, who was embraced during a time when there were fairly few vampires (not long after the Inquisition and long before the Modern Nights), in an area that has traditionally been the heartland of Clan Gangrel, has seen this explosion happen not only in the cities which he lived in but also in his clan, and while he doesn't mind the second much, he is unnerved by the explosion of members of other clans, especially when they don't belong to the Camarilla. That is the sect which he belongs to and that upholds and enforces the Masquerade - the principle that humans as a whole may not find out about the existence of vampires.
The other powerful vampire sect is the Sabbat, which technically lives in the same reality as the Camarilla, but has different ways of thinking about it and dealing with it. Essentially, the Camarilla opress chaos with "dignified" politics, and the Sabbat embrace it. The two don't particularly like each other (that's an understatement), and at times open war erupts between them. Camarilla heavily control embracing, while Sabbat are known to use mass embraces as a war tactic (embracing has no natural repercussions for the sire in VtM); Camarilla consider diablerie (the devouring of another vampire to get their power) one of the worst crimes while Sabbat have a lot less issues with it; Camarilla uphold and preserve the Masquerade while Sabbat do not; Camarilla deny Antediluvians and Gehenna being a possible issue while Sabbat partly center around it. And so on.
Gehenna, the vampire apocalypse. The thing that during the last years of Rasmus's existence, Camarilla elders have run into serious problems denying. There were just more and more signs of it, and eventually, it happened, though not as expected. And Antediluvians, the third generation, Caine's grandchildren, immensely powerful and old and some of them the ancestors of clans that still exist. They turned out to be a real thing as well.
Gangrel exist in both Camarilla and Sabbat, but can also be independent; during the Final Nights, the clan left the Camarilla almost completely after their Justiciar, the representative of their clan in the highest Camarilla gremium, stepped down. The clan has no real organization and hierarchy is based on ritual fighting to establish dominance whenever Gangrel do meet for a thing or althing, their week-long gatherings - there is, however, a regard for elders (that haven't given in to the beast yet), and while vampires in Europe generally tend to be older than those in America, Leif is still ranking high even before a contest, being old, an elder and still having lost very little to the beast. The most common group of Gangrel that can be found is a warband, responding to a specific threat.
All clans of vampires have strengths and weaknesses, special clan disciplines that are some kind of supernatural abilities as well as weaknesses that are curses on the whole clan, more or less terrible flaws - the Nosferatu are repulsive in their exterior, the Gangrel slowly turn more and more animalistic, the Ventrue can only drink a specific type of blood, the Malkavians are just plain insane, the Brujah have issues managing their temper, and so on. Most vampires can learn most disciplines, though they take time and effort and someone's agreement to teach them. Using such a discipline requires blood, and a vampire who uses his supernatural abilities will need to drink more than one who doesn't. While there is a clear preference for human blood (fresh or bagged), many vampires are also able to drink from animals, though that provides less nourishmentRasmus's beloved dogs can also function as emergency snacks.
A species of supernaturals depending on vampires existing are ghouls, humans (or animals, especially in the case of Clan Gangrel - both dogs that he'll bring into the game were originally ghouled) that exist on vampire blood (vitae) in addition to their normal needs and have some enhanced abilities. With the Sabbat there exist families of hereditary ghouls who can produce their own vitae, but normally, the human or animal needs to come back for vampire blood every so often.
Personality
In a number of ways, Rasmus is fairly typical for a Camarilla Gangrel. Those ways in which he isn't are almost entirely adopted from Leif or caused by him.
Two things that he clearly adopted from his sire are the focus on retaining a human-passing appearance (which is harder for a Gangrel in VtM than in VtR) and a penchant for not siring (in Leif's case with one obvious exception).
I'm listing the human-passing appearance here because gaining animal traits happens when a mental condition takes place: For every frenzy, that is the loss of control to the beast within, a Gangrel gains an animal trait, and every fifth of those stays permanently. There are various ways by which he achieves avoiding such frenzies. One is an - for his clan - unusual use of Drawing Out the Beast, the Animalism ability to send one's beast into someone else. He does it to not frenzy himself more often than to get his ghouls or allies to fight better. Another is always having a dog with him, which he found makes him calmer and thus enables him to better control his beast. The last is simply pointedly avoiding behaviours or situations that he knows will trigger him into frenzying. Rasmus doesn't know Leif's reason for insisting on being able to blend in with humans, though he has assumptions, but Rasmus's own reason is clear - as much as he prefers the countryside, his goal of putting Pedersen to final death in a humiliating way forced him to stick to cities, and not breaking the Masquerade just by walking around helps with that. And once that was accomplished the above tactics had just become a habit. Sure, he doesn't look fully human anymore, but he can still pass well enough (a big part of which was luck, because you can't pick what animal traits your body gains, the clan curse isn't that nice), and he will try to keep it that way as long as he can. [Part of the ooc reasoning is that I want him to actually look like his icons, because that makes play a lot easier.]
He would have had many chances to sire offspring of his own throughout his existence, and could probably still have obtained permission for it fairly easily in the modern nights. But he was never interested because of an overly picky attitude that he adopted from Leif. Most Gangrel, and especially Camarilla ones, will consider a potential offspring for months before embracing them, but Leif and Rasmus don't think that suitable is enough. The person has to be perfect as a loyal childe, and their success in not offing themselves or getting killed in the years following the embrace absolutely certain. That's pretty unattainable.
Leif's approach to embracing him - befriending him first, actually offering and explaining things in a few sentences beforehand, and making sure Rasmus had a secure homebase for his first lone months of trying to deal with his new situation - and his treatment of the younger vampire afterwards managed to ensure that Rasmus not only respected him but felt and still feels a deep bond to him that does resemble a blood bond, though it would perhaps better be described as an ideal (feudal) child-parent relationship: Trust and genuine concern for the other's well-being and happiness, deep respect for him and comfort in his presence. Perhaps a hundred years in, Leif started to return those feelings, not in the exact same way but as the parental side of it. Some other vampires have long suspected that there is a mutual blood bond between them, but there isn't. They rarely leave each other's side for long stretches of time, share a haven and have never worked against one another.
That means that Rasmus has never felt truly lonely or like he could trust nobody. He is by no means immune to the jealousy and distrust and low-key paranoia that one acquires after moving around the Camarilla (or vampire society in general) for a few centuries, but having Leif has provided him with a safe haven, a buffer between him and the abyss that are those feelings. There is a place that is different, where he doesn't need to exert absolute control to be safe. On the positive side, that makes it easier for him to keep his emotional health and humanity intact, on the other hand it is felt by his peers, younger and older, that he is not "maturing" quite as quickly as others. He plays the games of collected control well these days, but it is noticeable that he isn't quite as jaded as one would expect from a 400 year old vampire.
As much as he enjoys his position within the Stockholm Camarilla, Rasmus doesn't particularly enjoy anything else about it. He hated social functions when he was six and had to wear stuffy clothes and sit still at way too long official dinners with some other nobles, wishing that he could be out in the stables or run around the forest with his dog, and that feelings hasn't changed a bit. But for a long time, he had a goal in staying in Stockholm, and then for a long time no reason to leave. Him and Leif have a little cabin up in Norrland, but that is really only a good place to stay in winter when the sun doesn't or only barely rises over the horizon, creating about the safest wilderness that a vampire can live in. Spending the winters, or at least some days of the winters, there was great, but moving there completely (also staying the summers when the sun never really went down!) was out of the question.
So he stayed in the city until someone else made the decision for him, because he will be very aimless without a defined cause or goal. It isn't so much that he cannot make any decisions for himself, but he's never had to make the really big, course-changing ones, even though Leif sometimes made him feel like he did. He just isn't secure enough in his creativity for that kind of thing, and so he will float and go with the tides until something happens to him that makes him spring into action.
Something similar is true for plans. If he has been thrown into a position where he needs to make plans, he will make them; as a vampire in a social context, he will scheme; as a sheriff in a city under atack, he will develop strategies of defense; and so on. But when he isn't in a position where it is expected of him, he will go with the flow and let others make plans and give orders. He'll only follow those if he respects the person giving them enough or fears the repercussions for not following sufficiently, and if they seem somewhat reasonable, though.
All of this is why he makes a great subordinate leader - a captain with a commander above him, or something similar - but a terrible actual leader. He has good leadership abilities in a battle or generally in situations of war, but not outside of those.
It also makes him only ambitious to a point, as any office past the one that he actually reached would be way too independent for his liking. ...That, and way too shackled to social functions and spiderwebs.
His biggest virtue perhaps is his dutiful and thorough nature. He will follow through with a task that he started with stubborn determination, unless a very good reason stops him - survival always wins, sorry. He will look at details and hardly be distracted by anything. The corresponding weakness is that he is very reluctant to employ help with any such task, which makes him miss things that he cannot possibly see. He's just tends to be a lone wolf when given the chance. His dutyfulness will always (with the exception of Leif and Gustav) be applied to a task or job/office, never a person, cause or group.
Survival. As much as Rasmus was edging into suicidal territory after Gustav's death, once Leif got him out of that, he never returned. Leif made sure that he never again fully concentrated on only one thing in his life, but Rasmus also underwent the process where one just gets so used to unlife that even the greatest boredom/etc. would just make him go into torpor (which has no negative consequences in VtM). He is a fierce fighter and will throw himself easily into a battle, but only if he stands a winning chance or there is no option to run. Otherwise, he'll follow the premise of "if you run tonight, you'll be able to fight on tomorrow".
Finally, in situations where a show of any kind of emotion is not unwise, he is generally an upbeat person, someone who exudes an air of a careless happy fratboy. Even under other circumstances, he can often come off as someone who doesn't pay close attention or doesn't think particularly hard on things. That isn't really a mask, but it also isn't true. He wouldn't be alive anymore if he really was that blond. Especially those who see their stereotype about Gangrel being loyal, dumb hounds in him fall for it quite often, though, which suits him well enough. It makes things easier.
...to round this off, he is also pretty bad at flirting, which makes certain kinds of feeding hard. He can be very smooth, but the lady whom you have almost convinced to come to a quiet dark corner with you for some make-outs usually will edge away when you tell her that her hair is almost as pretty as your Golden Retriever's fur. One of his favourite targets in modern Stockholm are thus dog owners that take their dogs out late at night. The topics are easy, it's dark anyway, and ...so on.
Abilities
General
- He speaks Swedish, Latin, German and French fluently, though his speech might sound a bit dated especially in French. His English is severely lacking, mostly because he's a grumpy old grandpa and only recently admitted to himself that it is the international language of his present day. He can communicate in it, but not hold more complicated conversations or understand those who speak quickly or with a strong accent, and will have a strong accent himself. He also knows some Russian.
- He's ambidextrous, can work with most kinds of western blade weapons (his preference will always be swords, but in the last decades he's been mostly working with daggers/knives because you can actually have those on you when walking around without people staring) and is skilled in hand-to-hand combat, though he has no formal training or style in it. He can handle the most commonly used military firearms that were in style between 1600 and 1950, but only well enough to look like he knows what he's doing, not with any actual skill.
- He's generally a bit of a dog whisperer - even when he was still human, dogs would like him and be easily calmed by him and he was good at training them well, and centuries of working on his skills with dogs have only enhanced that. Sure, he has supernatural help with animals in a pinch, but if he doesn't have to, he will always use regular methods with dogs.
- He's good at tactics and strategy, acquired through battling both human and supernatural foes. Situations that involve some kind of battle or war also bring out his leadership abilities, which usually lie completely dormant outside of such situations.
- When he was still human, he loved hunting. He still does, things just have changed a bit - he's not necessarily hunting animals anymore, and he can't do it out in the daylight.
- Tying into the above, he is fairly observant and a good, patient anddogged stubborn tracker.
Disciplines
- Auspex 2 (Heightened senses, vague premonitions, seeing auras {aka: feelings/mental conditions, what kind of supernatural someone is, if someone has committed diablerie})
Rasmus mainly uses this ability for three purposes: Two of them tie into his position of a sheriff, namely investigations (overhearing conversations that people think you are too far away for is useful) and the detection of diablerists, the third ties into his favourite activity: Hunting. Being better able to detect smells, sounds and so on is very useful for that. Thus his ability to interpret feelings and mental conditions as well as premonitions is not very pronounced.
- Animalism 5 (empathic communication with animals, giving orders to animals, calling all animals of a species that are around, cowing an animal/person/etc {anyone with an "animal" in them} into apathy/fearful obedience, taking over the body of an animal, drawing one's own frenzy out and shoving it into someone else/an animal)
This is Rasmus's favourite discipline and thus the one that he has the most experience with, though Protean comes in as a close second.
- Dominate 3 (Ordering someone to do a thing {eye contact required, anything past one-word orders that can be expressed by gestures needs to be verbalized}, manipulating {stealing, creating and removing} other people's memories {again, eye contact needed})
By himself, Rasmus would probably never have learned this discipline at all. But Leif had it and kept prodding Rasmus about it, and after having witnessed just how useful the ability is (for example to fix minor breaches of the Masquerade without having to kill someone) and having been forced for a good long time to work with a Malkavian, Killing, who was an expert in this discipline (and you don't want to have to rely on a Malkavian) every time that he needed some memories fixed, he finally gave in and learned the discipline just enough to be able to do memory fixing. Both of that, and he realized that perhaps Dominate might be useful to corner Asger...
- Fortitude 3 (greater stamina/toughness, offers a chance to not be hurt by things that would otherwise cause grievous injuries: Fire, sunlight, vampire bites, werewolf claws, etc.)
This is mostly something that just exists for Rasmus - very handy, but nothing that he really knows to do something particular with.
- Protean 5 (Seeing normally in absolute darkness {eyes will glow red}, making claws that cause terrible damage on hands and feet, melting into the earth, turning into an animal form {a large, mixed-breed dog and a snowy owl}, turning into mist)
While Rasmus only learned how to turn into mist recently, he has had the other abilities of this discipline for a long time and made frequent use of them, so he has a lot of experience in them.
General vampire things
- Rasmus is a lot sturdier than a human would be, but at the same time he won't heal with time: He has to pointedly heal even the tiniest scratch. That in turn is a lot faster than running around with your arm in a cast for weeks, though.
- Sunlight and fire are much more dangerous to him than to a human: The easiest way to kill a vampire is to drag him out into the sunshine and wait. Rasmus can resist them with the fortitude discipline, but it costs a lot of power and only works to a degree. He is also forced to go to sleep during the day.
- He doesn't need any food but blood, but he's also unable to consume anything but blood. He can also psychologically bind to him by feeding them some of his own blood - in the case of humans and animals, that will also make them more intelligent, immortal and give them supernatural abilities, as long as he keeps up feeding them blood in regular intervals.
- Being a walking corpse, he doesn't need to breathe and has no body heat. The upside of the latter is that it needs more extreme temperatures in both directions to harm him than what a human would die of.
Inventory
- Casual but expensive clothes that are pretty torn and bloodied,
- Dogs:
Emil, a Swedish Vallhund, who due to being ghouled is more obedient and more intelligent than he should be, but he's also more easily aggravated into attacking.
Jenny, a German Shepherd, is a very lively, friendly and curious dog who listens, but isn't particularly good at keeping with orders for very long. In many ways, she acts like a puppy.
- Wallet
Samples
2016-11-1 | Dealing with someone coming across him feeding in a place where the dead are returned to life.
Character name: Rasmus Björklund
Character canon: old World of Darkness / Vampire: The Masquerade
Canon point: Night between the 12th/13th of December, 2000 (Finale of the Fair is Foul Gehenna scenario with Lilith winning)
Rasmus will enter the game briefly after having met final death. His dog Emil will have died at the same time for the same reasons (all vitae in the world perishing).
Age: 425 (looks like he is in his early twenties, though with an odd notion of age to it)
Gender: Male.
History
1. Life
Born in the North of Sweden as the third surviving son of a noble family in 1575. Went to Uppsala to study. Made friends with Leif through dogs. His family died of an epidemic, only his nephew Gustav survived. Moving in with Leif, he adopted Gustav.
2. Unlife
A while after he was embraced by Leif, Gustav was drunk dry by a Ventrue, Asger. The next centuries were spent plotting out Asger's demise. To this end, Rasmus eventually became sheriff of Stockholm. He enjoyed the position enough to try and keep it as long as possible after Asger died, right until the Gangrel left the Camarilla.
3. Gehenna
Rasmus became involved with the Camarilla again under the red eye and through that got pulled into the events around the final battle that took place in Stockholm. By the end of it, Lilith's faction won over Caine and two Antediluvians, vitae on Earth perished and Rasmus fell to dust. (Fair is Foul Gehenna scenario)
And in more detail:
Rasmus was born into a family of lower gentry in the North of Sweden as the third son who survived infancy, so he was kind of expendable from the get-go and it was no surprise when his parents sent him off to university in his late teens, unbeknownst to them exactly one century after the first Camarilla Conclave.
At first, he was miserable in Uppsala. The things that brought him the most joy weren't accessible anymore - the hunt, the kennels of his parents' house and the wide open lands to ride in. Instead, there was studying and dealing with the social circles of the city, both of which he could do well enough but didn't particularly enjoy. He'd been doing both since he was little due to his parents' station, even if they were country bumpkin nobility, but until now there had always been places to go to make up for it.
He had a hard time making actual friends, too: Drinking buddies he found easily, but the guys that he found interesting usually were too low-class for him to hang out with, and those of his own status or higher either didn't share his interests or looked down on him because he was from even further out in the sticks than them.
All of that changed when he met an only slightly older(-looking) man called Leif Einarrson who was of higher nobility and about as excited about dogs as Rasmus himself. Sure, he was a bit eccentric (and that also applied to some of his dogs), but Rasmus gladly put up with that in exchange for the access to Leif's close to twenty dogs, his horses... but as time passed almost even more for the easy companionship and the fun that the nightly hunts that Leif took him on brought, something that Rasmus had never considered before.
Considering Rasmus's canon, you might see where this is going. But it took a while. Leif was slow to make a decision in any direction, but then life (or rather, death), presented a perfect inroad: Almost all of Rasmus's family died of smallpox. The only survivor was a nephew of his, his most beloved brother's child. Knowing that the alternative was the boy being raised by an aunt who felt no love for his branch of the family, Rasmus immediately thought of adopting the boy himself. The issue was that he lacked the means to do so. Leif stepped in and offered that both Rasmus and his nephew, Gustav, stay with him, no strings attached but with the vague promise of helping out more in the future.
Rasmus, overjoyed, agreed and went to bring Gustav to Uppsala.
Leif, pleased, used the following months to befriend Gustav (which was quite easy, as the boy was overly trusting) and plant a paranoid thought in Rasmus's brain: What if he, Rasmus, died on Gustav, too? And then, when the thought started to grow into a panic, Leif extended an offer that would come as close to a guarantee of Rasmus not dying of an illness or other natural causes as anything could come. The child had odd bedtimes already, so it wouldn't make that much of a difference for him, right?
Again, Rasmus accepted. Leif gave him some words of advice, embraced him and immediately after picked up Gustav and took him to a human family some distance away, ostensibly because they had children of the same age who were currently given their first classes by a private tutor, so he could learn how to read with them. They stayed there over the winter while Rasmus figured out unlife. When they returned (Leif had stayed around somewhat to make sure that the Masquerade stayed intact, but never let Rasmus know about that), Rasmus was there to greet them, shaken but at peace with the situation. He missed daylight and food, still had trouble navigating human contacts when he only had the nights, and more, but he'd quickly gotten used to requiring human blood, likening it to having required meat for sustenance before. The lines of what animals we find acceptable to be used for food are arbitrary, aren't they?
The next years went by uneventfully. Rasmus learned more about what it meant to be a Gangrel and how to use his new abilities and deal with his weaknesses. Gustav grew and eventually turned nine. And then he died.
More specifically, someone drank him dry.
Rasmus didn't take well to this. At all. After the first rage had died down, he fell into a depression that edged into suicidal territory before long. Leif, having put work into Rasmus as his loyal offspring, fearing loss of face among his fellow Gangrel and being a certain degree of fond of Rasmus, poked at the issue until he found a solution. The solution was revenge. For the next couple of centuries, Rasmus's goal would be to find the vampire who had killed Gustav and obliterate them. But first, they needed to figure out who it was, and they didn't even have a lead.
Finding a lead to whoever it had been was Rasmus's main motivation for having Leif introduce him into the Camarilla. Nothing cropped up for a while, though, and when Sweden entered the Thirty Years War, Leif sent Rasmus off to do something fun instead. The next years Rasmus spent with an Uppsala based Brujah neonate from the same birth area (and thus serving in the same regiment), Nils Fahlgren, doing the equivalent of some frat boys' trip around Germany to drink all the alcohol and brawl with all the guys from that other stupid college. Neither of them met final death, and they had fun together, seeing the world and supporting Camarilla efforts against the Sabbat whereever the Swedish army went. And even if they didn't connect on more than a superficial level, and stayed that drinking buddies type of friends for all the centuries after. They often came together when Sweden was waging some major war again to poke around the conflict and Nils even moved to Stockholm when Rasmus did, but their relationship never progressed past superficial conversations even back home.
The main thing that Rasmus was doing throughout the next centuries was working his way into and up the Camarilla, seeing it grow and evolve around him. There were breaks and interruptions to this, because the Swedish Kindred kept having massive lupine problems and Leif and Rasmus were sidetracked by dealing with that time and time again, only existing on the fringes of the Camarilla for decades at a time sometimes - most Gangrel were independent and lived in areas that had even more issues with lupines than the cities, and while there weren't rules about such things, strictly, Leif was old, experienced and respected enough that any larger scale effort at fighting lupines would inevitable come to include him, and that automatically meant Rasmus, too. Sometime during these years, they relocated to Stockholm and in the early 20th century Rasmus assumed the position of Sheriff, something like the executive of the Prince of a given Dominion. It turned out that it was a job that he quite liked, and thus he stayed on it even after he had finally managed to take down the man that had killed Gustav.
Because Leif had found a Ventrue, Asger Pedersen, whose preying pattern fit Gustav to a T (Ventrue need very specific blood "donors") and who had been in Uppsala at the time in question, and after some going forth and back very cautiously they managed to confirm that it had really been him. Whatever Leif thought on the matter, Rasmus was elated and threw himself into the Camarilla machinations with abandon (at least as much abandon as caution and survival instincts allowed) and looked for a spot that would enable him to trip Asger. The Dane had long since moved to Stockholm for undeclared reasons, and thus this was the dominion in which Rasmus and Leif took up residence at that point. Using his eventually gained office of Sheriff, Rasmus kept an eye on Asger and kept tabs on him without raising suspicion, and managed to talk his Prince into being suspicious enough of the Dane to not allow him siring, ever. With Leif's help, he arranged for Asger to feel the need to do so anyway. He then gladly did his job and brought the Ventrue to judgement.
During these centuries, Leif and Rasmus formed a kind of co-dependency. Rasmus had been emotionally dependent on Leif from the start, but Leif came to depend on Rasmus for keeping him tied to the present, too. They gave each other purpose past their own survival, in a roundabout way, and trusted each other as much as any vampire possibly can trust another vampire. Leif might have been the one behind all of Rasmus's major decisions or goals, but Rasmus was also the one who sat at the centre of the web of Leif's machinations instead of being only a pawn in them.
When Clan Gangrel left the Camarilla, Rasmus resigned from his position almost immediately, and both him and Leif started to pull out of the sect. The reason for this was threefold: A growing unease with how the Camarilla responded to the situation, Rasmus's involvement with it long having served its initial purpose, and the realization that the lack of a justiciar would weaken their position within the sect and their remaining with the sect would weaken their standing within their clan - so they tried to leave before either could happen, but slowly enough to salvage a few things.
They narrowly avoided the door hitting them on the way out just because the house went up in figurative flames behind them: Rasmus's leave and some other trouble almost toppled the prince, who in turn only persisted because something else started to happen. At first, it was unclear what it was, but when elders panic, the whole house shakes. And they did panic.
It couldn't be the strange red comet that was approaching, or at least Rasmus doubted that ...until Leif was affected, suddenly turning into one of his animal forms mid-conversation. Rasmus, getting the distinct feeling that he would be next, contacted a man that he had worked with often before and whom he had always found to be a good partner in all kinds of matters: Mårten, keeper of the Elysium and a Nosferatu. They quickly pulled Nils, who had replaced Rasmus as the sheriff, into the mix as well, and then Killing, a Malkavian whom they had worked with before, too. Between the four of them and with some investigation they managed to confirm a suspicion: All elders malfunctioned in one way or the other.
Things got worse from there. The more time passed, the more Kindred were affected by those malfunctions - weakening blood and growing clan weaknesses. And something else rose too: Diablerie, the devouring of another Kindred by one of their own. Nils was obviously in the thick of investigating this, and he quickly came to involve Rasmus. Sure, the Gangrel was independent now, but he also had invaluable experience, something that was agreed on by primogen and prince enough to not hinder Rasmus's "employment". Meanwhile, Mårten and Killing encountered something in the sewers. Something powerful, that they weren't sure they had really scared off after. The sheriff pair, confirmed a number of cases of diablerie... and omitted one of them when they sent word back to the Prince. Because August, a neonate Ventrue with tale-telling newly acquired black streaks in his aura, was sheltering a young woman, Lyla, whose prophecies eerily matched Mårten and Killing's experiences, and she had more - and only trusted August. Taking her along, all five vampires decided to check out the second half of the prophecies.
They ran into a few traumatized Brujah on the way, and eventually found a club without guests - and a mirror that behaved strangely. Naturally, Killing decided to jump into it. Rasmus, having half expected this, grabbed for him, but instead of pulling the Malkavian back only managed to step through the portal which Killing had unwittingly opened. They landed themselves in the strangest and most frightening garden that they'd ever seen, and after some trials encountered ...someone. He didn't reveal himself, but explained to them that they were in the garden of Lilith, and urged them to join him in fighting her by sacrificing a young woman from Stockholm (whom they easily recognized as Lyla) in a ritual to defeat her. Otherwise, he claimed, the end of the world would be neigh, or at least the end of all Cainites, as Lilith was out to take revenge on Caine. Equipped with this knowledge, the two Kindred journeyed on and ran into an area that kept shifting in nightmarish horrors. In its middle, they found a woman who seemed to be at the centre of this and tried to calm her down. Neither Rasmus not his dogs succeeded, but Killing somehow managed to briefly pull her out of her craze because she thought that he was her brother - which sent her into a whole different mindset long and short enough for them not to die before a call reached her. Following her, they managed to return back to Stockholm.
Which was literally on fire. The rest of their coterie, including Lyla, had gone to investigate another vision, and run right into the arms of the Lasombra Antediluvian, who was quite happy about this unexpected gift, having considered the same ritual that the man in the garden suggested, just for his own gain. Lilith, to whom Lyla functioned as a kind of embodied avatar, intervened. Ungodly creatures from the depths of the ocean crawled up from the waters into which Stockholm is built, and (semi-)childless Antediluvians (like the woman who mistook Killing for her brother - the Malkav Antediluvian had a sister - which is why she was going to Stockholm now) that supported Lilith were heading in to rescue her. The guy from the garden joined the carnage, too, and was quickly consumed from within by the Tzimisce Antediluvian.
The commotion attracted Caine.
And everyone wanted a piece of him. Except for the coterie and Lyla, who were now reunited and had a short shouting match exchanging information and trying to hatch out a plan. In the end, nothing got coordinated: Nils tried to help out Caine directly, Rasmus and Killing tried to set up an impromptu ritual, aborted it and joined the fight as well, August lead Lyla to safety and Mårten secured their escape.
Caine, with a little help from his descendants, managed to defeat Tzimisce and Lilith's Antediluvians defeated Lasombra, and then the first vampire and the dark mother were facing each other down (drums in the distance...). Malkai used this moment to obliterate Caine while he wasn't paying attention.
And Rasmus, who was sitting next to Nils's body and a horribly transformed Killing, trying to heal himself up, noticed all strength leaving him and his age rushing in to catch up with his years. He saw Emil crumble to ashes before his eyes and under his hand as all vitae vanished from the world, taking his beloved ghoul with him. At the same time, his other ghouled dog shrank back to how she would look had she never been transformed. It only took a minute longer before Rasmus was gone, too, no more than ashes in the wind.
World
[Because trying to describe the whole of oWoD would take forever and the gamelines don't even always match up, I will limit myself to the vampire one here, centering on Northern Europe.]
Rasmus's world is a lot like our world around the millenium, at least as far as technology and what most humans think about everything else goes. It's just shittier - all the negative traits of the social and political structures of the human race are more pronounced and generally more rigid. It is also bigger than earth. There are various worlds or spaces beyond it. Rasmus world in a different sense - the one that he has been in contact with and that has a direct impact on his life is limited, though: He has only ever dealt with Earth directly and while he has been around, he never really left Europe (except for some excursions to the closer parts of Asia), and has spent most of his existence in northern Scandinavia. I'll focus on this second definition of "Rasmus's world".
Rasmus knows that other supernaturals exist (primarely he knows about "lupines", werewolves/garou, because he has been involved in run-ins and clashes with them, but that knowledge is one about the enemy and vampires don't actually know this enemy very well, as a rule), but what makes the main difference for him is the existence of vampires. Vampires have been among us for a very, very long time, and had their fingers in almost every historical event and development, using them for their intrigues that can span centuries and more.
Vampires live mostly in the cities, and where there used to be only a few, there are now many. It's getting seriously crowded. Rasmus, who was embraced during a time when there were fairly few vampires (not long after the Inquisition and long before the Modern Nights), in an area that has traditionally been the heartland of Clan Gangrel, has seen this explosion happen not only in the cities which he lived in but also in his clan, and while he doesn't mind the second much, he is unnerved by the explosion of members of other clans, especially when they don't belong to the Camarilla. That is the sect which he belongs to and that upholds and enforces the Masquerade - the principle that humans as a whole may not find out about the existence of vampires.
The other powerful vampire sect is the Sabbat, which technically lives in the same reality as the Camarilla, but has different ways of thinking about it and dealing with it. Essentially, the Camarilla opress chaos with "dignified" politics, and the Sabbat embrace it. The two don't particularly like each other (that's an understatement), and at times open war erupts between them. Camarilla heavily control embracing, while Sabbat are known to use mass embraces as a war tactic (embracing has no natural repercussions for the sire in VtM); Camarilla consider diablerie (the devouring of another vampire to get their power) one of the worst crimes while Sabbat have a lot less issues with it; Camarilla uphold and preserve the Masquerade while Sabbat do not; Camarilla deny Antediluvians and Gehenna being a possible issue while Sabbat partly center around it. And so on.
Gehenna, the vampire apocalypse. The thing that during the last years of Rasmus's existence, Camarilla elders have run into serious problems denying. There were just more and more signs of it, and eventually, it happened, though not as expected. And Antediluvians, the third generation, Caine's grandchildren, immensely powerful and old and some of them the ancestors of clans that still exist. They turned out to be a real thing as well.
Gangrel exist in both Camarilla and Sabbat, but can also be independent; during the Final Nights, the clan left the Camarilla almost completely after their Justiciar, the representative of their clan in the highest Camarilla gremium, stepped down. The clan has no real organization and hierarchy is based on ritual fighting to establish dominance whenever Gangrel do meet for a thing or althing, their week-long gatherings - there is, however, a regard for elders (that haven't given in to the beast yet), and while vampires in Europe generally tend to be older than those in America, Leif is still ranking high even before a contest, being old, an elder and still having lost very little to the beast. The most common group of Gangrel that can be found is a warband, responding to a specific threat.
All clans of vampires have strengths and weaknesses, special clan disciplines that are some kind of supernatural abilities as well as weaknesses that are curses on the whole clan, more or less terrible flaws - the Nosferatu are repulsive in their exterior, the Gangrel slowly turn more and more animalistic, the Ventrue can only drink a specific type of blood, the Malkavians are just plain insane, the Brujah have issues managing their temper, and so on. Most vampires can learn most disciplines, though they take time and effort and someone's agreement to teach them. Using such a discipline requires blood, and a vampire who uses his supernatural abilities will need to drink more than one who doesn't. While there is a clear preference for human blood (fresh or bagged), many vampires are also able to drink from animals, though that provides less nourishment
A species of supernaturals depending on vampires existing are ghouls, humans (or animals, especially in the case of Clan Gangrel - both dogs that he'll bring into the game were originally ghouled) that exist on vampire blood (vitae) in addition to their normal needs and have some enhanced abilities. With the Sabbat there exist families of hereditary ghouls who can produce their own vitae, but normally, the human or animal needs to come back for vampire blood every so often.
Personality
In a number of ways, Rasmus is fairly typical for a Camarilla Gangrel. Those ways in which he isn't are almost entirely adopted from Leif or caused by him.
Two things that he clearly adopted from his sire are the focus on retaining a human-passing appearance (which is harder for a Gangrel in VtM than in VtR) and a penchant for not siring (in Leif's case with one obvious exception).
I'm listing the human-passing appearance here because gaining animal traits happens when a mental condition takes place: For every frenzy, that is the loss of control to the beast within, a Gangrel gains an animal trait, and every fifth of those stays permanently. There are various ways by which he achieves avoiding such frenzies. One is an - for his clan - unusual use of Drawing Out the Beast, the Animalism ability to send one's beast into someone else. He does it to not frenzy himself more often than to get his ghouls or allies to fight better. Another is always having a dog with him, which he found makes him calmer and thus enables him to better control his beast. The last is simply pointedly avoiding behaviours or situations that he knows will trigger him into frenzying. Rasmus doesn't know Leif's reason for insisting on being able to blend in with humans, though he has assumptions, but Rasmus's own reason is clear - as much as he prefers the countryside, his goal of putting Pedersen to final death in a humiliating way forced him to stick to cities, and not breaking the Masquerade just by walking around helps with that. And once that was accomplished the above tactics had just become a habit. Sure, he doesn't look fully human anymore, but he can still pass well enough (a big part of which was luck, because you can't pick what animal traits your body gains, the clan curse isn't that nice), and he will try to keep it that way as long as he can. [Part of the ooc reasoning is that I want him to actually look like his icons, because that makes play a lot easier.]
He would have had many chances to sire offspring of his own throughout his existence, and could probably still have obtained permission for it fairly easily in the modern nights. But he was never interested because of an overly picky attitude that he adopted from Leif. Most Gangrel, and especially Camarilla ones, will consider a potential offspring for months before embracing them, but Leif and Rasmus don't think that suitable is enough. The person has to be perfect as a loyal childe, and their success in not offing themselves or getting killed in the years following the embrace absolutely certain. That's pretty unattainable.
Leif's approach to embracing him - befriending him first, actually offering and explaining things in a few sentences beforehand, and making sure Rasmus had a secure homebase for his first lone months of trying to deal with his new situation - and his treatment of the younger vampire afterwards managed to ensure that Rasmus not only respected him but felt and still feels a deep bond to him that does resemble a blood bond, though it would perhaps better be described as an ideal (feudal) child-parent relationship: Trust and genuine concern for the other's well-being and happiness, deep respect for him and comfort in his presence. Perhaps a hundred years in, Leif started to return those feelings, not in the exact same way but as the parental side of it. Some other vampires have long suspected that there is a mutual blood bond between them, but there isn't. They rarely leave each other's side for long stretches of time, share a haven and have never worked against one another.
That means that Rasmus has never felt truly lonely or like he could trust nobody. He is by no means immune to the jealousy and distrust and low-key paranoia that one acquires after moving around the Camarilla (or vampire society in general) for a few centuries, but having Leif has provided him with a safe haven, a buffer between him and the abyss that are those feelings. There is a place that is different, where he doesn't need to exert absolute control to be safe. On the positive side, that makes it easier for him to keep his emotional health and humanity intact, on the other hand it is felt by his peers, younger and older, that he is not "maturing" quite as quickly as others. He plays the games of collected control well these days, but it is noticeable that he isn't quite as jaded as one would expect from a 400 year old vampire.
As much as he enjoys his position within the Stockholm Camarilla, Rasmus doesn't particularly enjoy anything else about it. He hated social functions when he was six and had to wear stuffy clothes and sit still at way too long official dinners with some other nobles, wishing that he could be out in the stables or run around the forest with his dog, and that feelings hasn't changed a bit. But for a long time, he had a goal in staying in Stockholm, and then for a long time no reason to leave. Him and Leif have a little cabin up in Norrland, but that is really only a good place to stay in winter when the sun doesn't or only barely rises over the horizon, creating about the safest wilderness that a vampire can live in. Spending the winters, or at least some days of the winters, there was great, but moving there completely (also staying the summers when the sun never really went down!) was out of the question.
So he stayed in the city until someone else made the decision for him, because he will be very aimless without a defined cause or goal. It isn't so much that he cannot make any decisions for himself, but he's never had to make the really big, course-changing ones, even though Leif sometimes made him feel like he did. He just isn't secure enough in his creativity for that kind of thing, and so he will float and go with the tides until something happens to him that makes him spring into action.
Something similar is true for plans. If he has been thrown into a position where he needs to make plans, he will make them; as a vampire in a social context, he will scheme; as a sheriff in a city under atack, he will develop strategies of defense; and so on. But when he isn't in a position where it is expected of him, he will go with the flow and let others make plans and give orders. He'll only follow those if he respects the person giving them enough or fears the repercussions for not following sufficiently, and if they seem somewhat reasonable, though.
All of this is why he makes a great subordinate leader - a captain with a commander above him, or something similar - but a terrible actual leader. He has good leadership abilities in a battle or generally in situations of war, but not outside of those.
It also makes him only ambitious to a point, as any office past the one that he actually reached would be way too independent for his liking. ...That, and way too shackled to social functions and spiderwebs.
His biggest virtue perhaps is his dutiful and thorough nature. He will follow through with a task that he started with stubborn determination, unless a very good reason stops him - survival always wins, sorry. He will look at details and hardly be distracted by anything. The corresponding weakness is that he is very reluctant to employ help with any such task, which makes him miss things that he cannot possibly see. He's just tends to be a lone wolf when given the chance. His dutyfulness will always (with the exception of Leif and Gustav) be applied to a task or job/office, never a person, cause or group.
Survival. As much as Rasmus was edging into suicidal territory after Gustav's death, once Leif got him out of that, he never returned. Leif made sure that he never again fully concentrated on only one thing in his life, but Rasmus also underwent the process where one just gets so used to unlife that even the greatest boredom/etc. would just make him go into torpor (which has no negative consequences in VtM). He is a fierce fighter and will throw himself easily into a battle, but only if he stands a winning chance or there is no option to run. Otherwise, he'll follow the premise of "if you run tonight, you'll be able to fight on tomorrow".
Finally, in situations where a show of any kind of emotion is not unwise, he is generally an upbeat person, someone who exudes an air of a careless happy fratboy. Even under other circumstances, he can often come off as someone who doesn't pay close attention or doesn't think particularly hard on things. That isn't really a mask, but it also isn't true. He wouldn't be alive anymore if he really was that blond. Especially those who see their stereotype about Gangrel being loyal, dumb hounds in him fall for it quite often, though, which suits him well enough. It makes things easier.
...to round this off, he is also pretty bad at flirting, which makes certain kinds of feeding hard. He can be very smooth, but the lady whom you have almost convinced to come to a quiet dark corner with you for some make-outs usually will edge away when you tell her that her hair is almost as pretty as your Golden Retriever's fur. One of his favourite targets in modern Stockholm are thus dog owners that take their dogs out late at night. The topics are easy, it's dark anyway, and ...so on.
Abilities
General
- He speaks Swedish, Latin, German and French fluently, though his speech might sound a bit dated especially in French. His English is severely lacking, mostly because he's a grumpy old grandpa and only recently admitted to himself that it is the international language of his present day. He can communicate in it, but not hold more complicated conversations or understand those who speak quickly or with a strong accent, and will have a strong accent himself. He also knows some Russian.
- He's ambidextrous, can work with most kinds of western blade weapons (his preference will always be swords, but in the last decades he's been mostly working with daggers/knives because you can actually have those on you when walking around without people staring) and is skilled in hand-to-hand combat, though he has no formal training or style in it. He can handle the most commonly used military firearms that were in style between 1600 and 1950, but only well enough to look like he knows what he's doing, not with any actual skill.
- He's generally a bit of a dog whisperer - even when he was still human, dogs would like him and be easily calmed by him and he was good at training them well, and centuries of working on his skills with dogs have only enhanced that. Sure, he has supernatural help with animals in a pinch, but if he doesn't have to, he will always use regular methods with dogs.
- He's good at tactics and strategy, acquired through battling both human and supernatural foes. Situations that involve some kind of battle or war also bring out his leadership abilities, which usually lie completely dormant outside of such situations.
- When he was still human, he loved hunting. He still does, things just have changed a bit - he's not necessarily hunting animals anymore, and he can't do it out in the daylight.
- Tying into the above, he is fairly observant and a good, patient and
Disciplines
- Auspex 2 (Heightened senses, vague premonitions, seeing auras {aka: feelings/mental conditions, what kind of supernatural someone is, if someone has committed diablerie})
Rasmus mainly uses this ability for three purposes: Two of them tie into his position of a sheriff, namely investigations (overhearing conversations that people think you are too far away for is useful) and the detection of diablerists, the third ties into his favourite activity: Hunting. Being better able to detect smells, sounds and so on is very useful for that. Thus his ability to interpret feelings and mental conditions as well as premonitions is not very pronounced.
- Animalism 5 (empathic communication with animals, giving orders to animals, calling all animals of a species that are around, cowing an animal/person/etc {anyone with an "animal" in them} into apathy/fearful obedience, taking over the body of an animal, drawing one's own frenzy out and shoving it into someone else/an animal)
This is Rasmus's favourite discipline and thus the one that he has the most experience with, though Protean comes in as a close second.
- Dominate 3 (Ordering someone to do a thing {eye contact required, anything past one-word orders that can be expressed by gestures needs to be verbalized}, manipulating {stealing, creating and removing} other people's memories {again, eye contact needed})
By himself, Rasmus would probably never have learned this discipline at all. But Leif had it and kept prodding Rasmus about it, and after having witnessed just how useful the ability is (for example to fix minor breaches of the Masquerade without having to kill someone) and having been forced for a good long time to work with a Malkavian, Killing, who was an expert in this discipline (and you don't want to have to rely on a Malkavian) every time that he needed some memories fixed, he finally gave in and learned the discipline just enough to be able to do memory fixing. Both of that, and he realized that perhaps Dominate might be useful to corner Asger...
- Fortitude 3 (greater stamina/toughness, offers a chance to not be hurt by things that would otherwise cause grievous injuries: Fire, sunlight, vampire bites, werewolf claws, etc.)
This is mostly something that just exists for Rasmus - very handy, but nothing that he really knows to do something particular with.
- Protean 5 (Seeing normally in absolute darkness {eyes will glow red}, making claws that cause terrible damage on hands and feet, melting into the earth, turning into an animal form {a large, mixed-breed dog and a snowy owl}, turning into mist)
While Rasmus only learned how to turn into mist recently, he has had the other abilities of this discipline for a long time and made frequent use of them, so he has a lot of experience in them.
General vampire things
- Rasmus is a lot sturdier than a human would be, but at the same time he won't heal with time: He has to pointedly heal even the tiniest scratch. That in turn is a lot faster than running around with your arm in a cast for weeks, though.
- Sunlight and fire are much more dangerous to him than to a human: The easiest way to kill a vampire is to drag him out into the sunshine and wait. Rasmus can resist them with the fortitude discipline, but it costs a lot of power and only works to a degree. He is also forced to go to sleep during the day.
- He doesn't need any food but blood, but he's also unable to consume anything but blood. He can also psychologically bind to him by feeding them some of his own blood - in the case of humans and animals, that will also make them more intelligent, immortal and give them supernatural abilities, as long as he keeps up feeding them blood in regular intervals.
- Being a walking corpse, he doesn't need to breathe and has no body heat. The upside of the latter is that it needs more extreme temperatures in both directions to harm him than what a human would die of.
Inventory
- Casual but expensive clothes that are pretty torn and bloodied,
- Dogs:
Emil, a Swedish Vallhund, who due to being ghouled is more obedient and more intelligent than he should be, but he's also more easily aggravated into attacking.
Jenny, a German Shepherd, is a very lively, friendly and curious dog who listens, but isn't particularly good at keeping with orders for very long. In many ways, she acts like a puppy.
- Wallet
Samples
2016-11-1 | Dealing with someone coming across him feeding in a place where the dead are returned to life.