Fletcher, Master Vampire
Status: Approved
Mod Notes: Fletcher is a non-standard character, and thus the more extensive application to explain some of the unusual characteristics. Additionally, his and Charmaign's game mechanic of enforced neutrality allows them to be more powerful without unbalancing the game and enables maintaining a neutral gathering place for all characters.
Player Name: Jade
Player LJ: dreadnot
Player Email: butlerfetish gmail.com
AIM/YIM/etc.: butlerfetish (AIM and YIM)
Character Name: Fletcher
Character Type: Master Vampire, Belle Morte's line
Abilities: Complicated. All of Fletcher's greater powers are dependent upon physical proximity to Charmaign in a fashion similar to the heightened power a master vampire may gain from proximity to his human servant. The bond is explained in the history/background section.
Singly, Fletcher is barely more than a non-master vampire, albeit still one who is over six hundred years old. He retains hints of the power that rises with Charmaign's proximity, but they are nothing without his partner. He has all of the standard powers that any vampire may have - speed, fascination, capturing with his gaze, hypnotism, flight, etc. He heals well, but again, without Charmaign, it's nothing truly exceptional for his age.
With Charmaign, Fletcher is a very powerful master vampire. Powerful enough to be a Master of a City, except that vampire law and custom requires that such challenges be typically met one-on-one. Thus even if Fletcher were doing all of the fighting on his own, the fact that he requires Charmaign's presence to augment his power disqualifies him from truly being regarded as a power in his own right.
Ardeur: Together Fletcher and Charmaign possess a unique variation of the ardeur. This is what gives them their power as master vampires, but as always with the gifts from the ardeur, it comes at a price that may be equal to or greater than the benefit.
They cannot use their ardeur on others; it has been attuned to the two of them from their first night as vampires. Is it the ardeur that made them love each other? Probably, actually, but after 600 years, worrying about that is moot. However, what does matter is that their ardeur is what makes their hearts beat and what keeps them together. They are each other's masters, and a vampire without a master does not rise at night. No matter how Fletcher and Charmaign may fight, no matter how they may rage and sometimes hate each other, they can never be too far from each other when the sun rises or they risk not waking when the sun sets that night.
If that were not price enough, there is another that both vampires must carefully consider every time they are together. Their ardeur does carry a sexual/sensual/emotional component that is the ardeur's hallmark, again only usable between the two of them. When they drop their shields to each other and touch intimately, the ardeur will bring them together in a joining so profound that boundaries between self are lost. It is an ecstatic sharing, but so difficult to draw away from when there is no metaphysical safety valve. Over the centuries, the two have shared so much that there are memories neither can truly differentiate as being uniquely Charmaign's or distinctly Fletcher's. Since neither vampire truly wishes to lose himself in the other, they must fight to come back each time, and work to resist the urge to touch each other that both feels almost constantly. If they are junkies, the other is the fix, and ODing won't be something as simple as death.
Animal to Call: Together, Fletcher and Charmaign can call canines - dogs, wild, lycanthropic, preternatural, etc. Not wolves or foxes, just dogs. Separately they retain the ability to call normal dogs, although both seem to have a particular affinity for small, yappy ones.
Hearing Truth: Separately or together, don't bother trying to lie to them. As always, they cannot determine a lie that the speaker is certain is true, but they can hear the intent of the words. Although between the two of them, the line is blurred, not because they cannot hear the truth or lie in the other's words, but because their jealousies and suspicions may cloud their judgment.
Dominate: No one short of a Council member can mentally dominate Charmaign and Fletcher when they stand together. Since coming to their full power, they haven't tested to know whether they could stand against a Council member and would not because it would violate their hard-fought positions as neutral forces amidst a world filled with factions. Separately, they are strong in will, but again, not fully master vampire level.
Early Waking: If Charmaign and Fletcher die for the day physically touching, they will wake hours before sundown. If they are not touching, but merely near one another, they will wake at sundown as normal.
Aura Touch/Slash: Again this is a power they possess only together and involves manipulating and/or turning another's aura of power against them. They can use it both as a delicate instrument - a caressing touch, or a bludgeoning tool - crushing someone to the ground with their own aura or even turning that aura inward to pierce or cut. This is particularly powerful when they touch, and they can and will turn the aura of power against every single person in DMZ in whatever way that's required if it's needed to quell violence and maintain their home's neutrality. As a side effect of this power, they can sense the aura of power of every person in their domain (in this case, DMZ) and get a reasonably good sense of what kind (shifter, wizard, vampire, faerie, etc.) and how strong. This can and will be adjusted based on players' notations on shielding and/or deception, of course. They aren't omniscient, just very perceptive.
Wither: This power is Fletcher's alone, although it only manifests when Charmaign comes too close (approximately 10' is a reasonable ballpark). In legend, vampires kill all plants they touch. When Charmaign comes too close to Fletcher, that is exactly what happens, causing Fletcher's touch to wither and kill plants. He theorizes that he is drawing their life away to give to the ardeur that makes him and Charmaign master vampires, but even after 600 years, he cannot turn it on or off; it simply is and is by touch only, so he won't destroy a green zone to feed their power.
Human Servant: In theory it may be possible for Charmaign and Fletcher to have a jointly held human servant, but it would have to be someone on whom they could both completely agree, and given their propensity for jealousies and argument, they haven't been able to find anyone they could agree on in more than six hundred years.
Non-vampiric abilities: Speaks Welsh, French, Italian, Danish, Swedish, German, and English fluently and a smattering of many other languages well enough to get his point across. He can use a sword and bow with great proficiency and still remembers how to actually make arrows. He knows a great deal about exotic plants and has a remarkable orchid collection.
Age: 637 (born 1372, became a vampire 1402)
Kinsey Rating: 2 or 5 (will explain more in the personality section)
Physical Appearance: Fletcher is 6'3" (yes, toweringly tall for his time) with blue eyes, blond hair with a slightly receding hairline, and wrinkles around his eyes that show his age. He has a number of small scars on his hands and forearms from his work while human. His build is strong and well-muscled, but not in a 21st century, muscles built in the gym sense, but rather in a way that indicates that he once did serious physical labor.
He hasn't quite caught up to the 21st century in terms of dress, either. He'd only just adjusted to the 1950s and everything moved on without him, so he does still prefer button down shirts and ties and has a penchant for tweed that Charmaign seems to find alternately charming and annoying. When leaving the club, he almost always also wears a hat, as a man simply isn't fully dressed without his hat. As with all vampires, he can dress to the nines when needed, but he prefers the things that make him comfortable, and at this point, that's something about sixty years out of date.
PB: Paul Bettany
Personality: On his own, Fletcher seems to be a quiet but friendly man. He rarely lapses into the stillness or facial immobility of the older vampires (credit Charmaign for that). His version of the vampire's blank face is neutrally attentive, as though listening to a professor in a lecture hall. That is the expression he habitually wears when he's covering other emotions. He is an autodidact, preferring history, horticulture, and literature to anything more modern. Separate from Charmaign, he has a dry sense of humor and is extremely difficult to anger, although he's not above snarky observations if someone is trying to be inflammatory. He makes a point of engaging people at DMZ, but his friendliness with women is likely to be more real than with men. With men, his interest varies directly to whether he thinks Charmaign will think they're his type, and how much he and Charmaign have been fighting recently.
He is, however, quite jealous and possessive of Charmaign, despite the fact that the two of them have been on again/off again for decades. Charmaign can also bring out the screeching harpy in him the way no one else is able to.
Ultimately his life and personality are inextricably linked with Charmaign's. He loves the other vampire intensely, but also fears losing himself in that love and in their ardeur's allure. This leads to his picking at the smallest flaws, real or imagined, with Charmaign - things he would tolerate without question from others. In the bleakest pre-dawn light, alone in his apartment, separated by a single wall from Charmaign's apartment and bedroom, he'll admit that their fights are self-defense on both their parts - pushing away when everything inside tells them to drop all walls and be together in all ways for all time.
He was a religious man in life and thought in his early years that Charmaign and vampirism were temptations that he'd failed. He also knows that much of what he did in his earliest nights as a vampire were motivated by concern for his family, who were held over his head as hostages to his behavior. He will never betray anything but being comfortable with himself as he is, but deep down, he still has doubts about the choices he made and what they mean for his eternal soul. He has killed, he has sinned in the flesh, but he has never lost his faith in a Christian God. That is the part of himself he keeps locked away from Charmaign when they share themselves, and it is ironically the part that lets him come back to himself when the temptation of losing himself in his lover is at its greatest.
Fletcher is functionally homosexual, but that's... not as straightforward as an actual preference for men. Really, he's Charmaignsexual and if he were truly on his own, he'd prefer women. When he has sex with someone other than Charmaign, it's exclusively with men, but again, it's not so much that he prefers men as that in some messed up way he doesn't consider it cheating as much if it's with men as it would be with women, because he actually prefers women.
History/Background:
Wales: 1372 - 1402
Belle's Court, France: 1402 - 1612
Venice: 1612 - 1797
Copenhagen: 1797 - 1890
San Francisco: 1890 - present
Fletcher was born Wilim Saethau in Wales in 1372. The Welsh in the 14th century were the most formidable bowmen in Europe and Wilim was a fletcher. He fought with and for Owain Glyndŵr in the Welsh Revolt, but when Hotspur offered amnesty to Glyndŵr's men, Wilim reluctantly took it at his wife's urging. He might have denied her pleas, but she was pregnant again and already had three living children at home whom she argued needed their father. She needed their father. Wilim loved his wife, Morud, and their children, and agreed to return home for more than just stolen nights here and there.
After leaving the fight, Wilim took commissions to make arrows not for Glyndŵr or the English, but for the Church, turning his skills to crafting silver-headed arrows to be used against the evils that lurked in the darkness - creatures that changed form with the moon or preyed upon the blood and bodies of innocents. Wilim helped in some of these hunts, and had his faith in God confirmed on a night when he and other brave men were set upon by a pair of blood-sucking creatures that came from the darkness and were turned away by the glowing symbols of faith.
Historically, 1402 is when the French began to assist Glyndŵr against the English, and this is when Wilim came to the attention of Belle Morte's court. He certainly wasn't interesting enough to attract Belle Morte's attention directly, but a combination of an attractive face and form and useful skills were enough to attract one of her vampires, Sander. Sander sent his human servant, Arval, to try to hire Wilim to go back to France, but was rebuffed. Not to be dissuaded, they simply took him - a lone human could not hope to stand against a vampire and his human servant.
When Wilim came out of the trance Sander had kept him in while they traveled from Wales to France, he was imprisoned in greater luxury than he'd ever lived in, but had a rather annoying companion in his imprisonment - the spoiled brat sixth son of a French noble, Charmaign.
Charmaign and Wilim spent their last nights as humans trapped together, quite probably for the amusement value of those who could observe their clashing personalities and the arguments conducted in the only language the two shared in common - English - rather than Wilim's native Welsh or Charmaign's native French. They served as entertainment for the court as a whole in those final nights, but neither will speak of those things. Entertainments in Belle Morte's court took only a few directions and Wilim's cooperation was obtained through threats and promises regarding his family's safety.
Fletcher and Charmaign were brought over on the same night by Sander as part of an experiment at Belle's behest. What powers a vampire comes through the change with vary wildly, and Belle wanted to know if two very different men, brought over at the same time, by the same master, might have the same powers, or if they would still have different abilities from vampirism. The two men were different in age, education, social standing, nationality, sexual preference and experience, personality, faith, and even appearance. The question was, would they be the same or different as vampires?
After receiving the final bite from Sander, the two men's bodies were returned to their gilded prison to wait the three days until they would rise as vampires. Sander returned to them three days later before the sun had even set, expecting to find them still dead, as new vampires do not rise while the sun still rides the sky. He had planned to be there at their waking to give them his blood and bind them to him as their maker and master before taking them to feed. What he found instead was the two vampires locked in an embrace, feeding from one another with no awareness of the world around them. As they were pulled apart, they exchanged the words that vampires have shared from time immemorial to bind servant to master, Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, breath to breath, my heart to yours.
Fletcher's first memory after the change is of those words, and he has never known where they came from, only that they were there on his lips with Charmaign's blood. Magic.
They were curiosities after that - the two vampires who had bound themselves to one another. Sander tried to break their newly forged blood oath and succeeded in nearly killing both. Since Belle had wanted them as an experiment, it was by her order that the experiment continued with this new and unique variable.
That they were curiosities to Belle Morte didn't change the fact that they were new meat in a vampire court and thus the least among the vampires there. Fletcher and Charmaign learned to work together because they had no choice, and because they soon came to understand that they were in an "us against the world" situation. Their little metaphysical oops upon waking together their first night, left them bound to each other, and as time went on, their binding grew closer and closer until even the staunchly heterosexual and devout Fletcher was lost in love for Charmaign.
The first night their shared ardeur fully manifested, they might have been lost entirely if the sudden burst of metaphysical energy hadn't attracted the entire court's attention and drew Belle Morte herself to their room. Fletcher and Charmaign were locked in an embrace that neither would have been equipped to draw back from if she hadn't slid her own energy through theirs, planning to just take a taste of what they had created between them. It was enough to bring them back to themselves, and Fletcher to this day shudders at the memory of her foreign touch in that moment of intimacy.
The stories of their 210 years in Belle Morte's court could be endless, although most of them are simply typical for what was expected of any vampire in her service. They learned together and slowly worked their way from the bottom of the pecking order to somewhere in the middle. They served Belle in whatever manner she commanded. Fletcher made arrows when it was expected or needed. They were both occasionally sent to seduce pawns in Belle's power games, although they were not her favorites for that task because they could not be separated.
And as with any vampire in Belle Morte's court who was fair of body and face, one or both of them was expected to serve her desires in more personal ways whenever she required it. Belle remains to this day convinced that all love her, particularly those who have tasted her ardeur. Both Charmaign and Fletcher have been subject to the full power of Belle Morte's ardeur and both have felt the maddening heat of desire for her, but neither love her; their own ardeur protects them from that addiction with the love it fostered between them.
Unfortunately, that led to the slip that resulted in one of the most traumatic events in their long lives and started them on the path to making their escape from Belle's court. The facts are these:
One of them was with Belle and slipped in an intimate moment, calling out the other's name in an excess of passion.
Belle was of course enraged and chose to punish both vampires. One was put into a cross-wrapped coffin, the other was left free and told that he could earn his lover's freedom if he was good enough.
The one in the coffin received occasional visits from vampires telling tales of how his partner was disobedient and deliberately doing things to prolong their separation.
The free one was given impossible tasks to complete with the promise that as soon as they were completed, his partner would be freed.
This went on for nearly five years.
When the imprisoned one was released, it was the free one who took him through the careful process of bringing him back to the world. It was he who kept the newly-freed vampire from killing the wereleopard who was his first meal in five years. It was he who fed him his blood and restored their blood oath, not their maker, and it was he who held him in the warm water and eased him back to life. And when he finally dropped his walls to their ardeur, he found that his partner had no strength to hold back his side of the ardeur and it nearly washed them both away in a sharing so profound that to this day, they both remember the whole experience as though they had been both the free partner and the imprisoned one. Neither remembers which of them was truly freed and which spent those five years in a cross-wrapped coffin. When both remember it so personally, perhaps the difference is moot. It was at this time that they obtained the first in what would be countless generations of the babies, six small, no-strings-attached balls of warmth (Scottish terriers) to keep the vampires company when they had to be apart for even the space of a night.
When they recovered, they knew that neither could endure something like that ever again and that they had to find a way to be free of the court.
They couldn't turn to other vampires to aid them against a Council member, nor to the lycanthropes who were too scattered to be a true power and too hostile to vampires anyway. The White Council cared only about their own and wouldn't care to make a deal with a pair of vampires who wanted to run away from home.
This turned their attention to the Faerie Courts as their only possible hope. They presented their case at the Spring Equinox when both Courts were equal, offering themselves up as keepers of neutral ground in the mortal realm if only the Courts would back them with their power to keep them free of the Vampire Council. They were forced to undergo four trials to prove their worthiness to take this position, the last being to survive the Wild Hunt in the Nevernever for a full night without running to the mortal realm. The last they barely survived, but in the process learned that their ability to call and control dogs and hounds extends even to the hounds of the Wild Hunt, although even together and touching, the most they could do was bay the hounds when the hounds were targeting them specifically.
Still, neither Court had expected the two vampires to survive. The Winter Court is Charmaign's "sponsor" outside the Nevernever. The Summer Court took Fletcher. The Wyldfae offered one of their own to help watch over them and ensure that the balance is maintained. "Tinkerbell" has traveled with them ever since, but his history is his to tell. As long as the pair are not forsworn in their oath to maintain a place of neutrality for all preternatural beings in the human world and a safe entrance to and from the Nevernever, they have the Faerie Courts' backing in maintaining their freedom from vampire obligations.
In the nearly 400 years since then, they have never given any of the factions cause to regret allowing them their neutrality. They may be arrogant on their home ground, but they adhere scrupulously to rules of non-violence and neutrality in the areas they have maintained, first in Venice, then in Copenhagen, and now in San Francisco. As powerful as the two are together, all sides may silently agree that it's in everyone's best interests to see them maintain that neutrality... or see them destroyed. At least this way they're useful, and if the two of them have devolved into an ongoing cycle of being together or being at each other's throats, outsiders see that as being for the best as well, as they always seem distracted with each other.
They enjoyed their time in Venice, but left when Napoleon destroyed its millennium-long tradition as a republic. From there they went to Copenhagen, fostering an association with the mermaids of Copenhagen (an association is what neutral people have instead of an alliance ^.~ ) and from there, were asked to go to San Francisco. While they were not asked to negotiate with the San Francisco Bay's mermaids, it was hoped that their understanding of mermaid culture would help the mermaids come to the bargaining table under Charmaign and Fletcher's roof.
The vampires have enjoyed their years in San Francisco, and the Castro district may or may not have them to thank for its role as one of the leading gay neighborhoods in the world. Certainly Charmaign and Fletcher were there before it took that role and they plan to stay for many more years to come.
In 1967, during the Summer of Love, Fletcher was seduced by the vibrant atmosphere and a particularly appealing young human man. Granted, he and Charmaign had recently had a particularly bitter fight, and Fletcher did most of the seducing, but the end result was the same. Charmaign of course found out about the infidelity and the fight that followed only ended when Fletcher had the source of their fight spirited out of San Francisco with a promise never to return on pain of likely painful death at Charmaign's hands.
The fight ended, but so did their relationship to a degree. They split their shared quarters in half to two apartments. They split the club in half down the middle in terms of decor and "ownership" leading to DMZ's rather peculiar setup. They even arranged joint custody for the babies, switching off which night either vampire has care of the dogs. For the past forty-two years, things have been alternately chilly and unpleasantly hot between the two of them, with both vampires certain that since they're broken up, the other is screwing every man in sight.
In fact, Fletcher is still loyal to Charmaign. Perhaps because every time he attempts some relationship with another man, he compares each man to Charmaign. Perhaps because every time he attempts some relationship with another man, Charmaign stalks them both mercilessly. Mostly because there is no chance he can have with anyone else what he has had with Charmaign.
And thus we come to San Francisco today, where Charmaign and Fletcher jointly hold their shared territory, small though it is. Sometimes they hate each other, sometimes they love each other, and in love and in hate, they cannot be apart.
Note: I have been working on a series of ficlets for Fletcher's early background that can be found in his character journal. Any player who will be bringing in a character whose background overlaps in time and place with Fletcher's is welcome to contact me to see whether they would like to use any of those details in their play or background.
RP Sample:
DMZ was busy, Fletcher noted that as he came down from his apartment soon after sunset. Tinkerbell called a gravelly, "Evening," to him, and Fletch went to greet the fae behind the bar, giving him a smile and a kiss to the pulse at his wrist.
"Where is he?" he asked Tink without needing to specify which he he meant.
"Spa night with the babies," Tink answered in his incongruous raspy baritone before he turned away to pour a beer for a werewolf who didn't seem to know when to quit staring at the child-like faery in his skin-baring leather.
Fletch might have been amused by the man for being fool enough to even wonder if Tink was available or prey, but he had other things on his mind. "Did he have a nip before he left?"
"No." Tink set the beer in front of the werewolf, and when the foolhardy man tried to grab his hand, simply wasn't there. What was there was a thin-bladed silver knife that the werewolf grabbed by the blade before he could stop himself from completing the motion. Tink pulled the knife free, as though from a sheath, and turned away without apparently noticing the lycanthrope's cry of rage and pain.
Fletcher turned on the bleeding man and caught his eyes before he could lunge across the bar, leaning in to murmur in a friendly tone that belied the hunger he allowed to flicker across his expression, "I think you should leave now, don't you?"
The vampire waited until he was sure he was going to obeyed and then turned back to Tinkerbell, picking up the thread of the conversation as though it hadn't been interrupted. "Then where is he planning to find his meal?"
Tink shrugged and slapped a wet rag down on the bar to clean up the spilled blood. "You know me - see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. You've got his cell number."
Fletch frowned and even went so far as to pull out his phone before he put it away again. He wouldn't give Charmaign the satisfaction.
"Fine." And if he sounded a bit testy, he was. "Then it must be your night off, since it was my turn last night. Go enjoy yourself. Find someone who appreciates you and doesn't try to suck the life out of your with his - or her - endless neediness. I'll find someone here so I can watch things." And if Char came in while he was having a nip from a handsome young man, that would serve him right.
Mod Notes: Fletcher is a non-standard character, and thus the more extensive application to explain some of the unusual characteristics. Additionally, his and Charmaign's game mechanic of enforced neutrality allows them to be more powerful without unbalancing the game and enables maintaining a neutral gathering place for all characters.
Player Name: Jade
Player LJ: dreadnot
Player Email: butlerfetish gmail.com
AIM/YIM/etc.: butlerfetish (AIM and YIM)
Character Name: Fletcher
Character Type: Master Vampire, Belle Morte's line
Abilities: Complicated. All of Fletcher's greater powers are dependent upon physical proximity to Charmaign in a fashion similar to the heightened power a master vampire may gain from proximity to his human servant. The bond is explained in the history/background section.
Singly, Fletcher is barely more than a non-master vampire, albeit still one who is over six hundred years old. He retains hints of the power that rises with Charmaign's proximity, but they are nothing without his partner. He has all of the standard powers that any vampire may have - speed, fascination, capturing with his gaze, hypnotism, flight, etc. He heals well, but again, without Charmaign, it's nothing truly exceptional for his age.
With Charmaign, Fletcher is a very powerful master vampire. Powerful enough to be a Master of a City, except that vampire law and custom requires that such challenges be typically met one-on-one. Thus even if Fletcher were doing all of the fighting on his own, the fact that he requires Charmaign's presence to augment his power disqualifies him from truly being regarded as a power in his own right.
Ardeur: Together Fletcher and Charmaign possess a unique variation of the ardeur. This is what gives them their power as master vampires, but as always with the gifts from the ardeur, it comes at a price that may be equal to or greater than the benefit.
They cannot use their ardeur on others; it has been attuned to the two of them from their first night as vampires. Is it the ardeur that made them love each other? Probably, actually, but after 600 years, worrying about that is moot. However, what does matter is that their ardeur is what makes their hearts beat and what keeps them together. They are each other's masters, and a vampire without a master does not rise at night. No matter how Fletcher and Charmaign may fight, no matter how they may rage and sometimes hate each other, they can never be too far from each other when the sun rises or they risk not waking when the sun sets that night.
If that were not price enough, there is another that both vampires must carefully consider every time they are together. Their ardeur does carry a sexual/sensual/emotional component that is the ardeur's hallmark, again only usable between the two of them. When they drop their shields to each other and touch intimately, the ardeur will bring them together in a joining so profound that boundaries between self are lost. It is an ecstatic sharing, but so difficult to draw away from when there is no metaphysical safety valve. Over the centuries, the two have shared so much that there are memories neither can truly differentiate as being uniquely Charmaign's or distinctly Fletcher's. Since neither vampire truly wishes to lose himself in the other, they must fight to come back each time, and work to resist the urge to touch each other that both feels almost constantly. If they are junkies, the other is the fix, and ODing won't be something as simple as death.
Animal to Call: Together, Fletcher and Charmaign can call canines - dogs, wild, lycanthropic, preternatural, etc. Not wolves or foxes, just dogs. Separately they retain the ability to call normal dogs, although both seem to have a particular affinity for small, yappy ones.
Hearing Truth: Separately or together, don't bother trying to lie to them. As always, they cannot determine a lie that the speaker is certain is true, but they can hear the intent of the words. Although between the two of them, the line is blurred, not because they cannot hear the truth or lie in the other's words, but because their jealousies and suspicions may cloud their judgment.
Dominate: No one short of a Council member can mentally dominate Charmaign and Fletcher when they stand together. Since coming to their full power, they haven't tested to know whether they could stand against a Council member and would not because it would violate their hard-fought positions as neutral forces amidst a world filled with factions. Separately, they are strong in will, but again, not fully master vampire level.
Early Waking: If Charmaign and Fletcher die for the day physically touching, they will wake hours before sundown. If they are not touching, but merely near one another, they will wake at sundown as normal.
Aura Touch/Slash: Again this is a power they possess only together and involves manipulating and/or turning another's aura of power against them. They can use it both as a delicate instrument - a caressing touch, or a bludgeoning tool - crushing someone to the ground with their own aura or even turning that aura inward to pierce or cut. This is particularly powerful when they touch, and they can and will turn the aura of power against every single person in DMZ in whatever way that's required if it's needed to quell violence and maintain their home's neutrality. As a side effect of this power, they can sense the aura of power of every person in their domain (in this case, DMZ) and get a reasonably good sense of what kind (shifter, wizard, vampire, faerie, etc.) and how strong. This can and will be adjusted based on players' notations on shielding and/or deception, of course. They aren't omniscient, just very perceptive.
Wither: This power is Fletcher's alone, although it only manifests when Charmaign comes too close (approximately 10' is a reasonable ballpark). In legend, vampires kill all plants they touch. When Charmaign comes too close to Fletcher, that is exactly what happens, causing Fletcher's touch to wither and kill plants. He theorizes that he is drawing their life away to give to the ardeur that makes him and Charmaign master vampires, but even after 600 years, he cannot turn it on or off; it simply is and is by touch only, so he won't destroy a green zone to feed their power.
Human Servant: In theory it may be possible for Charmaign and Fletcher to have a jointly held human servant, but it would have to be someone on whom they could both completely agree, and given their propensity for jealousies and argument, they haven't been able to find anyone they could agree on in more than six hundred years.
Non-vampiric abilities: Speaks Welsh, French, Italian, Danish, Swedish, German, and English fluently and a smattering of many other languages well enough to get his point across. He can use a sword and bow with great proficiency and still remembers how to actually make arrows. He knows a great deal about exotic plants and has a remarkable orchid collection.
Age: 637 (born 1372, became a vampire 1402)
Kinsey Rating: 2 or 5 (will explain more in the personality section)
Physical Appearance: Fletcher is 6'3" (yes, toweringly tall for his time) with blue eyes, blond hair with a slightly receding hairline, and wrinkles around his eyes that show his age. He has a number of small scars on his hands and forearms from his work while human. His build is strong and well-muscled, but not in a 21st century, muscles built in the gym sense, but rather in a way that indicates that he once did serious physical labor.
He hasn't quite caught up to the 21st century in terms of dress, either. He'd only just adjusted to the 1950s and everything moved on without him, so he does still prefer button down shirts and ties and has a penchant for tweed that Charmaign seems to find alternately charming and annoying. When leaving the club, he almost always also wears a hat, as a man simply isn't fully dressed without his hat. As with all vampires, he can dress to the nines when needed, but he prefers the things that make him comfortable, and at this point, that's something about sixty years out of date.
PB: Paul Bettany
Personality: On his own, Fletcher seems to be a quiet but friendly man. He rarely lapses into the stillness or facial immobility of the older vampires (credit Charmaign for that). His version of the vampire's blank face is neutrally attentive, as though listening to a professor in a lecture hall. That is the expression he habitually wears when he's covering other emotions. He is an autodidact, preferring history, horticulture, and literature to anything more modern. Separate from Charmaign, he has a dry sense of humor and is extremely difficult to anger, although he's not above snarky observations if someone is trying to be inflammatory. He makes a point of engaging people at DMZ, but his friendliness with women is likely to be more real than with men. With men, his interest varies directly to whether he thinks Charmaign will think they're his type, and how much he and Charmaign have been fighting recently.
He is, however, quite jealous and possessive of Charmaign, despite the fact that the two of them have been on again/off again for decades. Charmaign can also bring out the screeching harpy in him the way no one else is able to.
Ultimately his life and personality are inextricably linked with Charmaign's. He loves the other vampire intensely, but also fears losing himself in that love and in their ardeur's allure. This leads to his picking at the smallest flaws, real or imagined, with Charmaign - things he would tolerate without question from others. In the bleakest pre-dawn light, alone in his apartment, separated by a single wall from Charmaign's apartment and bedroom, he'll admit that their fights are self-defense on both their parts - pushing away when everything inside tells them to drop all walls and be together in all ways for all time.
He was a religious man in life and thought in his early years that Charmaign and vampirism were temptations that he'd failed. He also knows that much of what he did in his earliest nights as a vampire were motivated by concern for his family, who were held over his head as hostages to his behavior. He will never betray anything but being comfortable with himself as he is, but deep down, he still has doubts about the choices he made and what they mean for his eternal soul. He has killed, he has sinned in the flesh, but he has never lost his faith in a Christian God. That is the part of himself he keeps locked away from Charmaign when they share themselves, and it is ironically the part that lets him come back to himself when the temptation of losing himself in his lover is at its greatest.
Fletcher is functionally homosexual, but that's... not as straightforward as an actual preference for men. Really, he's Charmaignsexual and if he were truly on his own, he'd prefer women. When he has sex with someone other than Charmaign, it's exclusively with men, but again, it's not so much that he prefers men as that in some messed up way he doesn't consider it cheating as much if it's with men as it would be with women, because he actually prefers women.
History/Background:
Wales: 1372 - 1402
Belle's Court, France: 1402 - 1612
Venice: 1612 - 1797
Copenhagen: 1797 - 1890
San Francisco: 1890 - present
Fletcher was born Wilim Saethau in Wales in 1372. The Welsh in the 14th century were the most formidable bowmen in Europe and Wilim was a fletcher. He fought with and for Owain Glyndŵr in the Welsh Revolt, but when Hotspur offered amnesty to Glyndŵr's men, Wilim reluctantly took it at his wife's urging. He might have denied her pleas, but she was pregnant again and already had three living children at home whom she argued needed their father. She needed their father. Wilim loved his wife, Morud, and their children, and agreed to return home for more than just stolen nights here and there.
After leaving the fight, Wilim took commissions to make arrows not for Glyndŵr or the English, but for the Church, turning his skills to crafting silver-headed arrows to be used against the evils that lurked in the darkness - creatures that changed form with the moon or preyed upon the blood and bodies of innocents. Wilim helped in some of these hunts, and had his faith in God confirmed on a night when he and other brave men were set upon by a pair of blood-sucking creatures that came from the darkness and were turned away by the glowing symbols of faith.
Historically, 1402 is when the French began to assist Glyndŵr against the English, and this is when Wilim came to the attention of Belle Morte's court. He certainly wasn't interesting enough to attract Belle Morte's attention directly, but a combination of an attractive face and form and useful skills were enough to attract one of her vampires, Sander. Sander sent his human servant, Arval, to try to hire Wilim to go back to France, but was rebuffed. Not to be dissuaded, they simply took him - a lone human could not hope to stand against a vampire and his human servant.
When Wilim came out of the trance Sander had kept him in while they traveled from Wales to France, he was imprisoned in greater luxury than he'd ever lived in, but had a rather annoying companion in his imprisonment - the spoiled brat sixth son of a French noble, Charmaign.
Charmaign and Wilim spent their last nights as humans trapped together, quite probably for the amusement value of those who could observe their clashing personalities and the arguments conducted in the only language the two shared in common - English - rather than Wilim's native Welsh or Charmaign's native French. They served as entertainment for the court as a whole in those final nights, but neither will speak of those things. Entertainments in Belle Morte's court took only a few directions and Wilim's cooperation was obtained through threats and promises regarding his family's safety.
Fletcher and Charmaign were brought over on the same night by Sander as part of an experiment at Belle's behest. What powers a vampire comes through the change with vary wildly, and Belle wanted to know if two very different men, brought over at the same time, by the same master, might have the same powers, or if they would still have different abilities from vampirism. The two men were different in age, education, social standing, nationality, sexual preference and experience, personality, faith, and even appearance. The question was, would they be the same or different as vampires?
After receiving the final bite from Sander, the two men's bodies were returned to their gilded prison to wait the three days until they would rise as vampires. Sander returned to them three days later before the sun had even set, expecting to find them still dead, as new vampires do not rise while the sun still rides the sky. He had planned to be there at their waking to give them his blood and bind them to him as their maker and master before taking them to feed. What he found instead was the two vampires locked in an embrace, feeding from one another with no awareness of the world around them. As they were pulled apart, they exchanged the words that vampires have shared from time immemorial to bind servant to master, Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, breath to breath, my heart to yours.
Fletcher's first memory after the change is of those words, and he has never known where they came from, only that they were there on his lips with Charmaign's blood. Magic.
They were curiosities after that - the two vampires who had bound themselves to one another. Sander tried to break their newly forged blood oath and succeeded in nearly killing both. Since Belle had wanted them as an experiment, it was by her order that the experiment continued with this new and unique variable.
That they were curiosities to Belle Morte didn't change the fact that they were new meat in a vampire court and thus the least among the vampires there. Fletcher and Charmaign learned to work together because they had no choice, and because they soon came to understand that they were in an "us against the world" situation. Their little metaphysical oops upon waking together their first night, left them bound to each other, and as time went on, their binding grew closer and closer until even the staunchly heterosexual and devout Fletcher was lost in love for Charmaign.
The first night their shared ardeur fully manifested, they might have been lost entirely if the sudden burst of metaphysical energy hadn't attracted the entire court's attention and drew Belle Morte herself to their room. Fletcher and Charmaign were locked in an embrace that neither would have been equipped to draw back from if she hadn't slid her own energy through theirs, planning to just take a taste of what they had created between them. It was enough to bring them back to themselves, and Fletcher to this day shudders at the memory of her foreign touch in that moment of intimacy.
The stories of their 210 years in Belle Morte's court could be endless, although most of them are simply typical for what was expected of any vampire in her service. They learned together and slowly worked their way from the bottom of the pecking order to somewhere in the middle. They served Belle in whatever manner she commanded. Fletcher made arrows when it was expected or needed. They were both occasionally sent to seduce pawns in Belle's power games, although they were not her favorites for that task because they could not be separated.
And as with any vampire in Belle Morte's court who was fair of body and face, one or both of them was expected to serve her desires in more personal ways whenever she required it. Belle remains to this day convinced that all love her, particularly those who have tasted her ardeur. Both Charmaign and Fletcher have been subject to the full power of Belle Morte's ardeur and both have felt the maddening heat of desire for her, but neither love her; their own ardeur protects them from that addiction with the love it fostered between them.
Unfortunately, that led to the slip that resulted in one of the most traumatic events in their long lives and started them on the path to making their escape from Belle's court. The facts are these:
One of them was with Belle and slipped in an intimate moment, calling out the other's name in an excess of passion.
Belle was of course enraged and chose to punish both vampires. One was put into a cross-wrapped coffin, the other was left free and told that he could earn his lover's freedom if he was good enough.
The one in the coffin received occasional visits from vampires telling tales of how his partner was disobedient and deliberately doing things to prolong their separation.
The free one was given impossible tasks to complete with the promise that as soon as they were completed, his partner would be freed.
This went on for nearly five years.
When the imprisoned one was released, it was the free one who took him through the careful process of bringing him back to the world. It was he who kept the newly-freed vampire from killing the wereleopard who was his first meal in five years. It was he who fed him his blood and restored their blood oath, not their maker, and it was he who held him in the warm water and eased him back to life. And when he finally dropped his walls to their ardeur, he found that his partner had no strength to hold back his side of the ardeur and it nearly washed them both away in a sharing so profound that to this day, they both remember the whole experience as though they had been both the free partner and the imprisoned one. Neither remembers which of them was truly freed and which spent those five years in a cross-wrapped coffin. When both remember it so personally, perhaps the difference is moot. It was at this time that they obtained the first in what would be countless generations of the babies, six small, no-strings-attached balls of warmth (Scottish terriers) to keep the vampires company when they had to be apart for even the space of a night.
When they recovered, they knew that neither could endure something like that ever again and that they had to find a way to be free of the court.
They couldn't turn to other vampires to aid them against a Council member, nor to the lycanthropes who were too scattered to be a true power and too hostile to vampires anyway. The White Council cared only about their own and wouldn't care to make a deal with a pair of vampires who wanted to run away from home.
This turned their attention to the Faerie Courts as their only possible hope. They presented their case at the Spring Equinox when both Courts were equal, offering themselves up as keepers of neutral ground in the mortal realm if only the Courts would back them with their power to keep them free of the Vampire Council. They were forced to undergo four trials to prove their worthiness to take this position, the last being to survive the Wild Hunt in the Nevernever for a full night without running to the mortal realm. The last they barely survived, but in the process learned that their ability to call and control dogs and hounds extends even to the hounds of the Wild Hunt, although even together and touching, the most they could do was bay the hounds when the hounds were targeting them specifically.
Still, neither Court had expected the two vampires to survive. The Winter Court is Charmaign's "sponsor" outside the Nevernever. The Summer Court took Fletcher. The Wyldfae offered one of their own to help watch over them and ensure that the balance is maintained. "Tinkerbell" has traveled with them ever since, but his history is his to tell. As long as the pair are not forsworn in their oath to maintain a place of neutrality for all preternatural beings in the human world and a safe entrance to and from the Nevernever, they have the Faerie Courts' backing in maintaining their freedom from vampire obligations.
In the nearly 400 years since then, they have never given any of the factions cause to regret allowing them their neutrality. They may be arrogant on their home ground, but they adhere scrupulously to rules of non-violence and neutrality in the areas they have maintained, first in Venice, then in Copenhagen, and now in San Francisco. As powerful as the two are together, all sides may silently agree that it's in everyone's best interests to see them maintain that neutrality... or see them destroyed. At least this way they're useful, and if the two of them have devolved into an ongoing cycle of being together or being at each other's throats, outsiders see that as being for the best as well, as they always seem distracted with each other.
They enjoyed their time in Venice, but left when Napoleon destroyed its millennium-long tradition as a republic. From there they went to Copenhagen, fostering an association with the mermaids of Copenhagen (an association is what neutral people have instead of an alliance ^.~ ) and from there, were asked to go to San Francisco. While they were not asked to negotiate with the San Francisco Bay's mermaids, it was hoped that their understanding of mermaid culture would help the mermaids come to the bargaining table under Charmaign and Fletcher's roof.
The vampires have enjoyed their years in San Francisco, and the Castro district may or may not have them to thank for its role as one of the leading gay neighborhoods in the world. Certainly Charmaign and Fletcher were there before it took that role and they plan to stay for many more years to come.
In 1967, during the Summer of Love, Fletcher was seduced by the vibrant atmosphere and a particularly appealing young human man. Granted, he and Charmaign had recently had a particularly bitter fight, and Fletcher did most of the seducing, but the end result was the same. Charmaign of course found out about the infidelity and the fight that followed only ended when Fletcher had the source of their fight spirited out of San Francisco with a promise never to return on pain of likely painful death at Charmaign's hands.
The fight ended, but so did their relationship to a degree. They split their shared quarters in half to two apartments. They split the club in half down the middle in terms of decor and "ownership" leading to DMZ's rather peculiar setup. They even arranged joint custody for the babies, switching off which night either vampire has care of the dogs. For the past forty-two years, things have been alternately chilly and unpleasantly hot between the two of them, with both vampires certain that since they're broken up, the other is screwing every man in sight.
In fact, Fletcher is still loyal to Charmaign. Perhaps because every time he attempts some relationship with another man, he compares each man to Charmaign. Perhaps because every time he attempts some relationship with another man, Charmaign stalks them both mercilessly. Mostly because there is no chance he can have with anyone else what he has had with Charmaign.
And thus we come to San Francisco today, where Charmaign and Fletcher jointly hold their shared territory, small though it is. Sometimes they hate each other, sometimes they love each other, and in love and in hate, they cannot be apart.
Note: I have been working on a series of ficlets for Fletcher's early background that can be found in his character journal. Any player who will be bringing in a character whose background overlaps in time and place with Fletcher's is welcome to contact me to see whether they would like to use any of those details in their play or background.
RP Sample:
DMZ was busy, Fletcher noted that as he came down from his apartment soon after sunset. Tinkerbell called a gravelly, "Evening," to him, and Fletch went to greet the fae behind the bar, giving him a smile and a kiss to the pulse at his wrist.
"Where is he?" he asked Tink without needing to specify which he he meant.
"Spa night with the babies," Tink answered in his incongruous raspy baritone before he turned away to pour a beer for a werewolf who didn't seem to know when to quit staring at the child-like faery in his skin-baring leather.
Fletch might have been amused by the man for being fool enough to even wonder if Tink was available or prey, but he had other things on his mind. "Did he have a nip before he left?"
"No." Tink set the beer in front of the werewolf, and when the foolhardy man tried to grab his hand, simply wasn't there. What was there was a thin-bladed silver knife that the werewolf grabbed by the blade before he could stop himself from completing the motion. Tink pulled the knife free, as though from a sheath, and turned away without apparently noticing the lycanthrope's cry of rage and pain.
Fletcher turned on the bleeding man and caught his eyes before he could lunge across the bar, leaning in to murmur in a friendly tone that belied the hunger he allowed to flicker across his expression, "I think you should leave now, don't you?"
The vampire waited until he was sure he was going to obeyed and then turned back to Tinkerbell, picking up the thread of the conversation as though it hadn't been interrupted. "Then where is he planning to find his meal?"
Tink shrugged and slapped a wet rag down on the bar to clean up the spilled blood. "You know me - see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. You've got his cell number."
Fletch frowned and even went so far as to pull out his phone before he put it away again. He wouldn't give Charmaign the satisfaction.
"Fine." And if he sounded a bit testy, he was. "Then it must be your night off, since it was my turn last night. Go enjoy yourself. Find someone who appreciates you and doesn't try to suck the life out of your with his - or her - endless neediness. I'll find someone here so I can watch things." And if Char came in while he was having a nip from a handsome young man, that would serve him right.