Application for Count Fagula for Bete Noire
1. Player Information
Name (or internet handle): Allison
Current characters in Bete Noire: None.
2. Character Information
Name: Conrad Achenleck
Livejournal Username: [info]miseryismyotp
Fandom: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Image: Link to userpic
3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance: Conrad Dillon Achenleck is 27 years old and is a skinny, wimpy little graphic designer. Now that he has been turned into a wimpy, skinny little vampire, he has a single fang on the left side of his mouth that sticks out. His clothes are typically hipster and pseudo-mock-Asian in origin with the labels cut out, and occasionally he'll wear a tie for a belt (he likes ties.) He's relatively average in height for his age and gender (5'6''), and has short-cut black hair and square glasses that he can barely see without. Though this piece of information never appears in the canon comic, the writer has confirmed that Conrad has a tattoo of a raptor skeleton on his left shoulderblade. Because the wounds on his neck from where he was bitten have not yet healed, Conrad is now a huge fan of turtlenecks, and also wears large shoes to make his little feet look bigger than they are.
History: Conrad Achenleck enters the narrative of Hanna Falk Cross when he ventures to the 24-year-old's home to complain about a vampire bat who refuses to leave his apartment. Hanna, new to paranormal detecting, agrees to take on Conrad for his first case, and travels with his nameless zombie friend to Conrad's apartment. Once there, the three find that there is, in fact, a prissy, sassy vampire bat called Adelaide hanging from the ceiling and severely annoyed with Conrad's reappearance, demanding he leave. Conrad yells and bitches until Hanna manages to sort things out; with Conrad and Zombie waiting outside the apartment, he will help Adelaide regain her humanoid form, convincing her to leave in peace.
Conrad, angry at being kicked out of his own apartment as Hanna assists Adelaide, bangs on the door in alarm when glowing runes shoot out from under the door. With Hanna coughing up blood on the floor and Adelaide now a human-shaped vampire, a fight breaks out between Adelaide, Conrad, and Zombie. Zombie's arm is torn off, and Conrad attempts to strangle Adelaide with a belt before being reminded that vampires do not breathe. He is kicked violently in the crotch and is subdued; Adelaide picks up the dazed man over her shoulder and flees to the roof, Zombie and Hanna quickly following.
When Hanna makes it up to the roof, Adelaide has disappeared and Conrad is dying, drained of blood and lying in a heap on the roof. Adelaide sneaks up from behind and attacks; Zombie manages to tear up her back with the claw end of Hanna's hammer. Hanna, fretting that he's just killed his first and potentially only client, takes the hammer with Adelaide's blood and forces the dying Conrad to ingest some of it, saving his life but turning him into a vampire, the fledgling of Adelaide. Angry, Adelaide flees when the fight with Zombie proves too much for her; Conrad, pissed, first punches Hanna and then very nearly falls over, dizzy and sick due to his new unlife.
At first in a state of disbelief about the whole thing, Conrad found himself being unwillingly dragged to see Hanna's "doctor," a back-alley practitioner without a degree and with a love of fur-lined coats and cigarettes named Doc Worth. The two....did not get along. After raging for a good long time over Conrad's inability to accept his new undead status and Worth's status as a practicing butcher, Conrad lost his temper and punched Worth in the face. Shocked, he brought his bloody fist to his mouth and tasted blood for the first time, stunned that it tasted surprisingly...good. Now cowed and uncertain, he came to gradually accept that he was now undeniably a vampire.
When next we see Mr. Achenleck, Conrad is sitting in a favorite bar of Hanna's, explaining that the blood he drank at Worth's helped him to heal much faster from the previous night. He also began to frantically apologize for hitting the Doc, as he is not typically a violent person and felt guilty over having broken the Doc's nose. Hanna, in response, laughed and started drinking Conrad's alcoholic beverage, and moving to give Conrad a bloodpack. Conrad also found himself awkwardly in the middle of a debate between Hanna and the bartender over whether Hanna was being weird at the customers again. BUT IT WAS OKAY as the bartender also held an envelope to be delivered to Hanna, starting off their next detective case. Conrad was suckered into following Hanna as the redhead bolted out of the bar, as he had taken Conrad's dinner with him.
The three reached an old theater and met their client Toni, whose building was inhabited by an angry ghost who became enraged whenever the lead singer of Toni's band sang offkey. After introductions all around, the theater was plunged into darkness, presumably by the ghost. The ghost then stormed through the group, diving through Hanna's body and causing him to collapse. Terrified and enraged, Conrad screamed a lot, until he saw how sick Hanna really was, and his anger abruptly ended when Hanna fell unconscious. Being a vampire, Conrad was also the only one who was able to hear/feel Hanna’s heart actually stop for a brief second, and felt the situation warranted more concern than what the rest were expressing. The group then traveled back to Doc Worth to get Hanna patched up, despite Conrad's panicked demands that Hanna be taken to a real hospital.
At Worth’s, Conrad immediately went into a rage at Worth’s apparent need to keep Hanna’s unique biochemistry a secret, and the two fought. Again. Hanna woke up, and Worth succeeded in chasing Conrad out of his office by throwing a blood pack out his door and ordering him to fetch. Conrad, unfortunately, only managed a sip or two before Toni burst through the front door, causing a surprised, angry vampire to squeeze the bag and explode his meal all over his face. Good times were not had.
The group - Conrad, Zombie, Hanna, and now Toni - headed back to the defunct theater to confront the ghost, despite Conrad’s cries about health hazards. To make him happy, Hanna left Conrad outside with Toni while he and Zombie ventured further in to investigate mysterious screaming.
While outside, Conrad and Toni were unfortunate enough to run into Casimiro and Finas: two older, far more powerful vampires with a serious bone to pick with Conrad’s sire, Adelaide. Cas, the more…enthusiastic of the pair, immediately picked a fight with Conrad and kicked him in the face, laughing and taunting him. This didn’t exactly sit too well with Toni, who transformed herself into a werewolf, striking Casimiro across the face and protecting the wimpiest vampire of all time. Fortunately, before a huge fight could break out, Finas stepped in between werewolf and vampire, breaking it up.
Tensions eased, and the four supernatural creatures settled down to play a card game while they waited for Hanna to come back, much to Conrad’s disgust and boredom. Once Hanna did return - leading with him a shark-toothed sarcastic kid named Veser Hatch - Casimiro got to the point of his intrusion. As Hanna was at fault for releasing Adelaide from her batty form, Casimiro and Finas wanted to hire the paranormal investigator to lure their apparent rival out from hiding. After threatening Hanna, the two took to the sky, Casimiro suggesting that Hanna use “Snaggletooth” as a way of procuring Adelaide. Conrad was less than impressed.
With Veser Hatch’s parents both missing and the ghost thing apparently solved while Conrad wasn’t looking, Conrad unexpectedly found himself guarding the 19-year-old kid from apparent harm, wrapped up in a mystery Hanna was too enthusiastic to explain. Conrad took Veser back to his apartment, where the two seemed to pretty much ignore each other, tied together only by the insanity Hanna seemed to be dealing with on the side.
He was drawn further into Hanna craziness when the investigator showed up to his apartment the next night to question Veser about a man named Ples Tibenoch, who was involved in the death of the ghost at the opera house. Flying off the handle, Veser fled the apartment to track down the mysterious Tibenoch, leading Conrad to cluelessly follow Hanna along if only because….well, Conrad wasn’t sure himself. Morbid curiosity, or a general sense of protectiveness for his new friends.
The group ventured to see Toni, and Conrad was forced to translate Hanna’s tactless negotiating, and ended up recruiting her to sniffing out Tibenoch and find out just how he was connected to the ghost from the theater. Alarmed at seeing Toni transform, her and Conrad briefly exchanged words about both being not quite what the other was expecting when one thinks of vampires and werewolves.
Upon arriving at Tibenoch’s house, Conrad discovered to his overwhelming ire that he was blocked from entrance; as a vampire, he wasn’t allowed inside. Hanna, Zombie, and Toni were forced to leave him at the front door as they ventured further into the house of a suspected madman. As Conrad fumed outside, the clock struck 12:21am, and iron portcullises slammed down across every door and window of the house, locking the group inside. A gunshot rang out, and Conrad, panicking, bolted in order to find help.
He found that help when he burst into Doc Worth’s office to find him and Lamont Touchey, an apparent friend and back-alley dealer, exchanging black market organs. Raging at the greasy men, Conrad rapidly explained the situation amidst curses and insults, and demanded help. Lamont was quick to act, taking the vampire outside to his car, while Worth grudgingly followed. The three, crammed togther in the front seat, began driving to Tibenoch’s, when Adelaide of all people appeared in the backseat of the car, instructing Lamont to drive faster: behind them, another car was following, and in that car was Abner VanSlyk, resident vampire hunter.
Personality:
Conrad Achenleck is a bubbling cauldron of anxieties compressed into a thin graphic designer with serious anger management issues. He is neurotic, he loathes to be touched by people he doesn't know (and hey, by most people he does know, too), and lives a somewhat reclusive lifestyle, up until his introduction to Hanna: at least, he is never seen with any friends that were not Hanna's friends first. He is a complete wuss-bucket, is canonly known as the worst vampire in the world, and hates the idea of feeding on strangers because biting into the possibly dirty neck of someone you don't even KNOW is both rude and disgusting.
While initially understandably upset at his turn to vampirehood, Conrad eventually grew to slowly accept this change, displaying an adaptability to the supernatural that would come in handy during his dealings with Hanna. However, he’s still reluctant about many parts of his new lifestyle, and becomes unnerved when he doesn’t see his reflection in mirrors or gets headaches in the daytime, even in rooms with black-out curtains.
He is typically accepting of all kinds of people, provided they are nice to him and don't punch him in the face; thus, he can get along well with Zombie, but despises the very-much-human Doc Worth, and frequently gets into furious arguments about what Conrad feels is Worth's insane non-practice butchery (which it pretty much is.) At the same time, he is the straight-laced everyman, who becomes understandably alarmed at the existence of the supernatural, despite counting himself as one of their number. Often he will talk to himself in the background of a conversation about how weird everything is and how no one seems to notice but him.
Conrad is one of the sane men and voices of reason in a world typically filled with things not of his understanding. And while he does think in a reasonable way (much like Zombie), unlike Zombie he doesn't usually express himself reasonably. More or less, he is given to screaming profanities and demanding information from sources unwilling to give it, and will constantly rage if something does not make sense or is immoral or illegal. He prefers being discrete and not drawing attention to himself, which is completely the opposite of how Hanna handles matters. He hates breaking the law, hates going where he’s not supposed to, and feels anxious and nervous whenever he feels he’s intruding on something he shouldn’t be anywhere near.
Conrad may be viewed as incompetent by some, as he is probably the least-prepared of all of Hanna's acquaintances to be dealing with the supernatural, but in his defense he is both new to the world of vampirism and paranormal, and also seems quite capable of taking care of himself and others in the normal, human world; he has a very nice apartment where he works as a freelance graphic designer, a car, and enough money to get by and buy what he likes (though he is not super-rich by any stretch of the imagination).
He dislikes people invading his space, and has taken the time to carve out his own special niche in the world where he feels most comfortable; people upsetting that niche, or taking it over, or throwing his world into chaos will face the full wrath of his ire. However, Conrad is not a very physically violent person and though he can fight if pressed, will almost always choose not to. Deep down, Conrad is a very nice person, though if he has not had ample time to settle in and get comfortable, will take a long time to show it. He has a very small amount of patience and is almost always exasperated with whatever Hanna is doing to upset things. If people around him can make it through his snappish, standoffish ways, they might discover a pleasant, decent person underneath all that anxiety.
It has been stated by his creator that he is afraid of heights, knows French, and likes Asian culture, ancient art, and coffee.
Sexual Preferences/Orientation: Conrad has been confirmed by his writer to be a 27-year-old virgin, due to not meeting that special someone yet. He is straight, and prefers intelligent, confident women, but so far has had little luck in finding anyone he clicks with that hasn't done him serious bodily harm. He has been hit on by gay men before, and finds those kinds of situations awkward and uncomfortable for all involved.
He does not like to be called Confag, or Count Fagula.
Powers: Conrad is a vampire. If he would actually get off his ass and feed on someone, this would mean something. As he hasn't drank anything fresh and lives entirely off of medicinal blood packs, he has not gained any typical vampires powers, nor regained most of his normal human strength and probably lives to be punched in the face. He may be able to turn into a chubby little bat wearing glasses, but will probably have to drink some blood before doing this, and the act will almost certainly not be voluntary. He doesn’t need to breathe, and can’t see himself in mirrors any longer. Unfortunately, not having vampire strengths doesn't prohibit Conrad from having vampire weaknesses: among other things, he cannot eat regular food, cannot go anywhere near sunlight, and cannot enter occupied residences where he has not been invited. Pretty much a fail!pyre all around.
Reason for playing: Having Conrad in Bete Noire is sadistically hilarious to me because he spends so much time protesting his inner, more base nature in his own canon. He refuses to bite anyone and give into the sin of hurting another person; playing that struggle of man vs. nature is something that’s always appealed to me. In a city of sex and sin, he’s a 27-year-old virgin. Conrad in canon is also always on the brink of discovering new worlds and immediately hating them; to put him in a new city with new rules he’s forced to learn is something explicitly interesting to write when he’s so adverse to anything remotely sinful.
5. Samples
First-Person:
FOR FUCK’S SAKE.
How hard, how hard is it to get decent coffee here? YesIknow I can’t drink it. Just…just don’t say anything. I just need…coffee right now. I need normal right now. Everyone can run around and be demons and HOW CAN YOU BE USED TO THAT, but I…I’m not. I’m not one of you, I’m sorry. I’m just a guy who wants his coffee and who wants to spend five minutes put together without fearing for his life.
Why is that so much to ask?
Third-Person:
A panicking, rapid panting was beginning to take over Conrad’s regular breathing. Of course, given thought to it, there really shouldn’t have been a reason he had to breathe, shouldn’t be breathing at all…but it was an old habit after inhaling every minute of his life. He couldn’t help it. This was all kinds of wrong.
Twisting around in the front seat of Lamont Touchey’s car, Conrad stared through the back windshield at the vehicle trailing them, and his stomach gave another clench. Whoever was in that car was bad. They needed to drive, much faster than they were going, because Conrad knew instinctively that death was waiting in that car for them all.
Oh god. He didn’t want to die. He couldn’t imagine dying. Damn it, he was just getting around to the idea of living! This wasn’t fair.
“Can’t you speed this fucking thing up?!” Conrad snapped, louder and much higher-pitched than he’d meant to. Damn it, he didn’t mean to yell, he was just so panicked and scared and oh god what if the crazy man in the other car started firing at them?!
But no one answered. Not even a “Shut the hell up, Count Fagula” from Worth. Alarmed, Conrad turned back around in his seat…
…Only to find no one was there. Worth, Lamont, Adelaide…they’d all disappeared. What…?
The car was fading too, now. It slowed down, coming to a stop in the middle of the street, but it couldn’t have been the street because it was in the middle of nowhere. He had been in a city, and now he was standing, defenseless, in the road while a car speeded head-on towards him.
Conrad flinched, bracing himself and shutting his eyes tightly as he prepared for the car’s bumper to smack into
him. A horn sounded, a brush of air nearly knocked him off his feet, and then…
Nothing.
Silence.
Conrad opened his eyes. He was still standing in the middle of a road. But there were no cars, no lights, no…anything. Nothing except the bright glow of nearby civilization at the bottom of a hill he stood on now.
As he stared down at a city he knew he didn’t recognize, Conrad could only speak in a hoarse, weak tone;
“What the fuck.”
Third-Person #2:
It was still early, which was why Conrad had drawn the curtains over all the windows in his apartment; not a hint of sunlight was allowed to cut through. The door was locked, Veser was at classes, and Hanna wouldn’t arrive for hours.
Conrad was alone. It was how he liked it.
Lying on his back, the vampire stretched an arm underneath his bed, taking out the slim manila envelope that had been slipped under his door only moments ago. It was his dinner, as much as he hated to think about it, but his stomach was grumbling. It had been days since he’d last…
Teeth ripped the package open quickly, and the single sharp tooth punctured the bag inside before Conrad could think twice about it. Immediately, euphoria swept over him as he closed his eyes and laid back, sucking contently on the luke-warm blood that fell thick against his tongue.
Previously when he’d received similar envelopes, Conrad had kept to the dining room table for his meals, like a civilized person. But if certain foods were supposed to act as aphrodisiacs, then blood was the worst of them all. As Conrad allowed his mind to open up more and more to the concepts of vampirism, he found himself increasingly more turned on with each meal he took.
Holding the pack in one pale, grasping hand, Conrad’s other hand moved lower, sliding into the front of his pants. His mouth filled with blood and he gurgled happily, seizing his penis through the front of his underpants. As he drank, and touched himself, a small part of Conrad was embarrassed to have sunk this low in his masturbation ritual. He stopped at least three times, to make sure again that the door was locked. Again.
Curling back underneath his blankets, Conrad paused to take off his glasses before resuming his oh-so-satisfying nightly ritual.