Profile / Application

[foolofthegods]

Out of Character Information

player name: Kristi
player journal: redrover
playing here: Severus Snape, Benjen Stark
where did you find us? Charly lured me from ATP
are you 16 years of age or older?: Gosh I hope so.

In Character Information

character name: Khayman (or Benjamin, the Devil)
Fandom: Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles
Timeline: After the end of Queen of the Damned
character's age: Around 6,000 or 7,000 years old (Wikipedia says 5,000 B.C., book says he's 6,000, I am not good at maths. At some point, I guess a millenium or two doesn't matter so much.) He looks to be in his 30s.

powers, skills, pets and equipment:

He canonically has a veritable assload of abilities which really make him ridiculously overpowered - flight, the ability to kill others with his mind, the ability to have out-of-body experiences, telepathy, super strength, speed, agility, and hearing.

So let's pare it down.

He'll keep the strength, agility, hearing, and speed because he rarely uses them, and the ability to communicate and influence thought through telepathy.

He also has the ability to look at a thing and know how it functions, and has a vast understanding of technology. This can really only benefit him in Scorched and help me avoid doing a "How does a Forge work?" post.

Everything else goes in the rubbish bin.

Let's also make it easier to overpower and kill him.

I'll note here that he doesn't need to feed on people. He does it because he enjoys it, but due to his personality, if someone tells him not to do it, he'll probably listen and feed on animals, instead.

canon history:

He has a wiki!

personality:

Often, Khayman has no sense of self. Whenever he stops having fun or feels pain, he forces himself to stop thinking about whatever may have caused this low, and inevitably begins to forget everything. In this state, he can be jovial, childlike, and simple. He laughs and plays, letting life buffet him about rather than moving through it. However, because of the inevitable erasure of his past, it begins to depress him when he can't remember whether he was once human - or, indeed, anything but his own name.

Unlike the other main vampires of the stories, Khayman was not chosen because he was extraordinary or beautiful or loved. He was an average, unimpressive human being, and Akasha made him a vampire simply to see if she could. This has an effect on his personality in that he is not as attached to his maker as others are to theirs, and doesn't suffer as greatly when the inevitable parting occurs. He doesn't have the strong emotional attachments to other vampires which are such a focal point of the series, though he does wish for them and envy others when they have them.

His relationships seem to focus more on mortal women than on immortals of either gender, and, indeed, his strongest feelings are directed toward people he loved or at least knew when he was human, himself. He retains a good deal of his humanity and compassion in spite of his age and closeness to the original source of vampiric nature. He is optimistic and enamored of progress, and it's these factors, along with his ability to forget who he was, which allowed him the longevity - seven thousand years - he has.

He is inexorably drawn to his brethren, however; he wants to be accepted, to be part of something. When it becomes fashionable for vampires to dress in the iconic Dracula garb, he does so because of the attention it garners him. When he sees other blood drinkers, he tries to join them and be part of their coven, if only for a little while. If he is unaware of other blood drinkers (often, he forgets that he isn't the only one), he'll entertain mortals. He'll recite poetry and sing songs, behaving like a gracious host. He likes people to like him.

However, he won't get to know his victims. When he hunts, he becomes someone else entirely. He approaches quietly, becoming a monster, and inevitably tears his prey to shreds. He doesn't have to hunt, but does it because it pleases him, because it's enjoyable. He doesn't have the finesse of other vampires, though he could if he tried. His attacks are brutal and cruel. The only thing which will turn him away from a victim is if they see him before he attacks; he thinks it's inappropriate to get to know your food before you eat it.

Essentially, what you have with Khayman is a socially inept god. After Queen of the Damned, he is the oldest of his race; he looks nothing like modern vampires. He has gone rather mad with the Dark Gift, acting like a fool when he's not lucid, and, though bearing a sharp mind, suffering violent moodswings and severe loneliness when he is. He's guileless, subservient, craven, awkward to social cues, uncertain how to behave around others of his kind. In one scene in the novel, he attempts to hug a fellow vampire he just met and doesn't understand what it is he has done wrong.

He doesn't like to see people suffer and acts out of kindness when he can, only to the extent that it will do no harm to anyone. He is the ultimate champion of fence-sitting. Even when the vampires gather to challenge Akasha, Khayman doesn't speak for or against her. His sense of duty to both sides leaves him unable to act. He won't choose where to place his loyalties unless there is a solution which will leave all parties alive.

However, even this has its limits; if he is betrayed or personally hurt by someone, he will lash out in anger. The greater the slight, the less regret he has for his actions. When he was made into a vampire, he took his revenge against Akasha (whom he claimed was no longer Akasha to help ease his conscience) by turning the Twins into vampires, and embarking with them on a campaign to create the First Brood and overthrow Akasha and Enkil. He is not a warrior, but his anger makes him a fighter.

He thinks he empathizes with people, but what he actually does is project his own emotions on to them and, when they don't behave as he expects or understands, he becomes confused and angry. If someone runs from him when he thinks they ought to be friends, he lashes out like a child. Khayman is, in the end, extremely emotionally immature and unable to connect with others because of this.

He's an idealist; has moments of absolute pleasure and bliss, and then, when things don't work out just as he wants, he crashes into depressive states or rages. He's deliriously happy when he is with his own kind; while other vampires tire of the continued proximity of others such as themselves, it is all Khayman wants. He is very simple in this respect; he wants the connection which prevents him from forgetting who he is. He wants companionship and happiness. He wants to be with his family - Maharet, Mekare, and Jesse.

On the subject of these three: Khayman fancies himself in love with Maharet. She is the mother of his child, and thus the mother of the Great Family (a matrilineal family she has traced from that first daughter through the millennia). However, it is something upon which he will never act. Though they traveled together as vampires and 'shared their secrets by moonlight', that was six thousand years ago and he is too much a coward to act on his emotions now. Similarly, he loves Jesse; she is his granddaughter (great, many times over). He hasn't known her long enough, however, to know his place with her.

In most panfandom settings where people have become jaded to the idea of vampires, he might have a bout of self-pity and depression because he is no longer admired and loved by mortals simply for being what he is. He won't understand why he can't charm everyone as he once could and might surround himself with people who can recreate that illusion simply because he likes to be special and favored. He's a vain creature and, when he's lucid, likes to be known and remembered.

why do you feel this character would be appropriate to the setting?

Like with Snape, I think he would work in a grimdark setting. He's a well-rounded character and the place needs more vampires to deaden it up.

;)

Writing Samples

Network Post Sample:

Over here!

Third Person Sample:

Time and memory, odd things that they were in Khayman's world, became a repository for the lost and found. On occasion, there was a strange mingling of past and present, where one could not be successfully separated from the other. Tendrils of nights gone by clung to him unshakeably like cobwebs, snatches of music or conversation overheard in passing and not easily forgotten. Oh, true, he reeled away from those reminders which caused him pain, but in doing so, he forgot all but his own name - or worse, he remembered inconsistently. He became incapable of distinguishing what was now and what once was.

One night, he found himself searching for his cellular phone, delightful little toy that it was. He tore his flat apart, overturned the sparse furnishings, checked the pockets of his various coats and cloaks, rummaged beneath the seats of his car. The search continued for days; the company he kept then offered to help him retrace his steps, which had been a prospect he rather liked: a treasure hunt for a misplaced mobile. While combing the streets with a cheerful band of young Athenian men, he remembered that he had, a month before, rolled the little device up into a metal ball with his bare fists and chucked it through a plate-glass window.

On another night, he attempted to call a mortal woman he knew; her number rang not as disconnected, but as incompletely dialed. But the number had worked just fine yesterday! Or had it been forty years ago? Yes, perhaps. A closer look at the situation told him she had died twenty years prior.

And though he now occupied a flat in Anatole, and though he knew there was a sharp and obvious distinction between this city and the beautiful Mediterranean world he had inhabited before, he still became confused. Tonight, for instance, Khayman found himself searching for some sign of Mael on the Forge network. He had no actual memory of Mael using the Forge, but hadn't he recently spoken with the man? They were in a crowd, they were somber, Mael had touched his hand and he had tried to hug his fellow blood drinker. Where had that been? Where was Mael now? Where were Armand and Jesse and Daniel? When he could find no evidence of the others, he groaned and buried his face in his hands, allowing himself the weakness of crying while he tried to remember and not remember and -

Hummed thoughtlessly, the idle, happy notes of some song he'd heard.

When he raised his head again, hours had passed unnoticed. He stared curiously for a long moment at the Forge, now lying uselessly on the floor where it had fallen from his fingers. What had he been doing with it?

He couldn't quite recall.

Anything else?