(no subject)
[OOC Information]
Name: Sceadu
Age: 25
AIM / E-mail / LiveJournal: sceadugesceaft / dracogriff (at) gmail / hitokiri_neko
What characters do you play here already, if any? Axel, Aqua, Granny Weatherwax and Iskierka
[IC Information]
Character Name: Nikola Tesla
Series: Sanctuary
Gender: Male
Age: 155
Species: Sanguine vampiris (more or less)
Appearance: Coming in towards the taller end of average with short brown hair and brown eyes, Tesla really isn’t someone who stands out much, although he is decently good-looking at the very the least. He also can usually be found wearing some sort of variant on the theme of suit.
When he’s tapping into his vampiric genes his eyes turn completely black and his teeth turn into something more resembling fangs.
Personality: Nikola Tesla is not really a nice man. As a matter of fact, he tends to be something of asshole. The fact that he’s also arrogant and just a little self-centered doesn’t really help matters any. You see, the man is a genius, knows it, and sees no reason that shouldn’t keep him from reminding people of it. In short, he’s not really the kind of person who most people enjoy seeing, and his frequent attempts to recreate the vampire race certainly don’t help matters any.
However, this is not to say that he doesn’t have friends, or at least, people who are willing to tolerate his brand of hidden agendas. It’s just that generally speaking, these happen to be the rest of the Five, and thus the people who have seen his more altruistic moments - and it should be noted that he can be, and has been, more than willing to help out in more serious situations. It’s just that sooner or later he ends up reverting to usual ways.
History: Nikola Tesla was born in 1856. From there, he proceeded to live, and since a quick look at wikipedia can explain the further details of his early life, we’ll instead jump to the point at which canon starts to take a turn from history as we know it. Namely, the point at which he entered university. Oxford, to be precise, although how and why he was there is a question that has yet to be addressed. Nonetheless, he soon fell in with a group of fellow scientists: Montague John Druitt, Helen Magnus, James Watson, Nigel Griffin. Together, they became known as The Five (and were, for a brief moment, very nearly The Six), a group of scientists dedicated to pushing the boundaries of known science.
And then, one day, their lives were changed. You see, they’d come across a sample of rare, untainted vampire blood (hereafter referred to as the Source Blood) and had managed to create a serum of it. With opportunity thus in front of them, each of the group chose to take the step into evolution. Helen gained the gift of amazing longevity, Griffin became able to turn invisible, Druitt became able to teleport, and Watson’s intelligence grew to superhuman levels. But it was Tesla who changed the most - the serum reacted with his then-as-unknown latent vampiric genes. Effectively, he became a vampire. He also began to display a sort of minor ability to control electricity, but whether or not this was a side effect of the source blood is less then clear.
None the less, life (and science) continued on. For a while, it was even relative calm. And then, things began to go somewhat pear-shaped. A killer was loose on London, a killer that history would come to know as Jack the Ripper. Given his uncommon gift for detective work, Watson took the problem into his own hands; looking for the culprit. In the end, the culprit proved to be none other that Druitt himself.
But there was little time to dwell on this development. Another specter of The Five’s past had sprung up, this time in the form of Adam Worth, the man who had once made The Five nearly The Six. Bitter over the loss of his daughter, and his mistaken belief that Helen had refused to help save her, he had become a monster. Or rather, he had developed a second, much more monstrous personality. And when that second personality was poised on the threshold of destroying England itself, The Five were called in to see to it that he didn’t. Despite some initial disinterest in the idea, they were eventually swayed by the promise of an official pardon for Druitt as well as the backing of the King for Helen’s Sanctuary network. And so they saw to it that Worth was chased very nearly across the entirety of the countryside - the last they saw of him was him throwing himself over a steep cliff to avoid being shot by Magnus.
The next time Nikola Tesla stepped into the limelight was during World War 2. He was the one to first crack the Enigma code, and his autotype - which could pass secret messages that couldn’t be intercepted - helped the allied forces. Admittedly, even then it wasn’t fool-proof - on least one occasion it was by a mole to almost disastrous effect - but there was no denying that his work had a great effect on the war. And none of these were more notable then his attempt to foster peace by selling the plans for his death ray to every Allied nation.[?]
Unfortunately, while Tesla’s attempts to make good on his invention could possibly have been considered kind-hearted, the fact of the matter is that it backfired. Rather spectacularly, as a matter of fact, and in relatively short order, he found himself a wanted man by every major spy agency. Needless to say, this didn’t go over well, and with pressure mounting from all sides, he did the last thing he could think of. He died. Or at least, that’s what the world was led to believe. He’d actually gotten in contact with Helen Magnus and arranged to fake his own death. Thus, he ‘died’, a bitter old man without a penny to his name.
And then he promptly dropped out of sight for the next sixty years. No one saw him, no one heard of him, and not even the rest of The Five heard from him. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until [year] that he next appeared in something like the public eye.
As a matter of fact he didn’t resurface until 2008, at a conference in Rome that Helen was speaking at. However, he himself didn’t enter the conference room. Instead he sent a note to be delivered to her: a note along the lines of the fact that her very life was in danger and that she needed to leave the room immediately. With no real reason not to distrust him, she did so, and just in the nick of time as no sooner had she done when agents of one of the enemies (known simply as the Cabal) of the Sanctuary came rushing into the room. Conveniently enough, Tesla knew a way out through the catacombs of the city. Naturally, the agents of the Cabal followed them, and the less-than-friendly conversations that ensued revealed their true intent. They weren’t after Helen; they were after Tesla, and with good reason. He had discovered a method to turn newly-dead corpses into vampires. But there was a side effect he hadn’t intended. He could raise the dead, and grant them the abilities of sanguine vampiris... but the new vampires were as dumb as a sack of bricks.
It was for this reason that he’d gotten back in contact with Helen, since he’d hoped that he’d help him come up with a strain of vampires that was all that they had originally been. Unfortunately for him, Helen had no interest in ruling the world. Tesla, in turn, took this less then well and things might well of gotten more than a little bit violent had it not been for the timely arrival of Druitt. Or at least, the fist that he stuck rather literally Tesla’s abdomen by virtue of teleportation.
Given the severity of the wound, it took even Tesla’s supernatural healing ability to bounce back and the next time he appeared was several months later. While he was recovering, the Cabal had created a virus intended to induce violent insanity in all abnormals. The test run only affected a few communities of abnormals, but the Cabal were paused to launch a second, and even greater dispersion bomb. With the world poised on the brink of all out war between humans and abnormals, what remains of the Five convene to recover the last remnants of the ancient vampiric blood that had given them their powers, on the basis that it may contain some manner of antigen to the disease. The only problem? They’ll need all of the Five to reclaim it, and Griffin has been dead for decades. However, as things happen to turn out, his granddaughter is alive and well - and more importantly, bears the legacy of her grandfather.
Tesla, however, is yet again nowhere to be found and with no time to hunt him down, an expeditionary force is mounted to the last resting place of the Source Blood: Bhalasaam, the last great city of the vampires, and nothing more than ruins when they arrive. The destruction isn’t recent - it appears to date to approximately the turn of the twentieth century - but it does make finding the entrance to the subterranean labyrinth that holds the Source Blood a daunting task, until at last Watson recognizes a small part of the architecture and uses that to extrapolate the entrance to the labyrinth. And who should they find once they reach the bottom but Tesla himself?
As it turns out, he’d gone there to learn what he could of his ancestors... and more than likely scope out the trials required to acquire the Source Blood. Thus, with The Five more-or-less reconvened, they set out to their respective trials. The trials are brutal, and in some cases very nearly fatal, but for a few slight errors they manage to pass the trials and gain access to the source blood.
The trip, however, was not without casualties. Shortly after they’d reclaimed the Source Blood the machine that had been keeping Watson alive failed, and so with a heavy heart the remaining members of the group returned to the Sanctuary. To add insult to injury, shortly after they returned, the source blood was stolen by a sleeper agent of the Cabal. Worse still, the sleeper agent is Helen’s daughter.
Six weeks later Tesla has, after much work, managed to create a cure for the Cabal’s virus neutralizing that particular problem. Yet there’s still the matter that the Cabal have both Helen’s daughter as well as the Source Blood and appear to be after several young people with perfectly normal DNA. The reason for this becomes apparent after following a potential lead leads Helen, Druitt and Tesla neatly into a trap. They find Helen’s daughter, yes, but she’s been turned into a sort of superabnormal with the combined abilities of both Tesla and Druitt and all three are forced to retreat. Worse still, the Cabal has copied that same DNA pattern onto that of the young people they had kidnapped, leaving them with a veritable troupe of superabnormal soldiers.
Furious over the state of things, Helen manages to get in touch with one of the members of the Cabal who informs her that they would be glad to return Helen’s daughter in exchange for the Sanctuary Network. Helen, quite naturally, refuses and instead tasks Tesla with creating a weapon that will disable her daughter’s new abilities but leave her unharmed while the rest of the Sanctuary prepares for war. Meanwhile, the Cabal strikes, taking out the Tokyo Sanctuary before Helen is even able to send back-up. And so, the Sanctuary Network goes to war. However, the superabnormals prove too powerful a threat to handle, and after more than a few Sanctuaries are destroyed, Helen and the rest of her team move to the UK Sanctuary, where the superabnormals are believed to strike next.
The battle that follows is something of a trial by fire. Tesla’s hastily built weapon proves to be ineffective, and only the fact that the superabnormals’ healing factor proves to be unable to keep up with a fire element ultimately saves the UK Sanctuary. The superabnormals are still very much alive, for all that they’ve been forced to retreat and that leaves just one thing for Helen and her team. Protecting their own home. This time, however, Helen gives Tesla a vial of her daughter’s blood, after admitting that what she’d asked him to do before was an impossible task. With the last piece of the puzzle in place, Tesla sets about modifying the weapon while the rest of crew bring up the Sanctuary’s defenses.
The Cabal, however, are prepared for this, and manage to sneak a virus into the system, bringing down the Sanctuary’s shields moments before the superabnormals attack. This time, however the Sanctuary holds the advantage, thanks to Tesla’s weapon. It’s a small advantage, but it lets them hold their own until they can bring the shields back online. This in turn negates the superabnormal’s teleportation, and within a relatively short time, the only two remain: Helen’s daughter and one other. Faced with the prospect of either killing her mother or letting the other remaining superabnormal do the same, Helen’s daughter manages to break through her conditioning just enough to grab the other and teleport the both of them into oblivion courtesy of the Sanctuary’s shields.
And so it is that yet again life settles into the general everyday business of the Sanctuary, as gathered forces disperse back to where they’d come from.
Of course, neither is this the last time Helen and company run into Tesla. Several months after the death of Helen’s daughter, a series of cases in which dead teenagers are refusing to stay dead leads to drug clinic in Mexico, run by one Dr. Baumschlager. Or, as they happen to know him better: Nikola Tesla. He’s once again been up to his usual tricks, and in the course of curing poor drug-addled teens he’s also been turning them into vampires. However, according to him none of them should have been turning into vampires so soon, since he’d had the foresight to put a time-lapse trigger on the transformation. But there was one very important thing he’d forgotten: death. A violent death, in particular, would be more than enough to force the vampiric genes into the forefront. However, he and Helen are unable to start discussing how to reverse the situation before the newly-minted vampires arrive and kidnap Tesla. With his blood and his knowledge of their species, they now have everything they need to take over the world... and Tesla’s not invited, a fact that he takes less than well, given that he’s the one who masterminded the whole affair in the first place.
Helen, meanwhile, has returned to the Sanctuary in search of the failsafe that she knows Tesla would have built. After very nearly turning the Sanctuary inside out, she finds it, although she’s at a loss as to how to use it. So she does the only thing she can think of. She takes the weapon to it’s creator, and promptly finds that Tesla has somehow managed ingratiate himself to the young vampires and directs them to escort her to a small room in the back of suite and tie her up. However, it turns out that was just a ruse, as Tesla himself follows not long thereafter and asks for the failsafe.
Under the circumstances, she has little choice but to give it to him, and with it in hand he proceeds to de-vamp the newly minted vampires. However, the final vampire to be de-vamped pulls him into the devamper’s effective range, depowering Tesla as well. Depressed over the fact that he’s now effectively normal, Tesla returns to the Sanctuary with Helen, in the hopes that the de-vamping process can be reversed. Unfortunately, this is not to be the case - the de-vamped genes reject any attempt to change them to their original state. However, at the last moment, Tesla develops a sort of magnetic ability and decides that he ‘can work with that’ before setting out into the world at large again.
However, it’s not long at all before he lands himself yet again, this time while exploring a series of caves in the Columbian highlands. Taking advantage of the caves’ natural magnetism (the reason he was there in the first place) he sends a message to the last remaining autotype in existence: ‘SOS’. Conveniently, the autotype happens to be in possession of Helen Magnus, and she mounts a rescue, even knowing full well that it might be a trap. It turns out to be no such thing, since she and the others arrive to find that Tesla quite literally tied up. Cocooned, really, in what seem to be almost abnormally strong natural fibers.
While they’re working on cutting him loose, Tesla explains that the caves are inhabited and that the inhabitants are more than a little territorial. As a matter of fact, they’ve no sooner cut him down then the inhabitants in question show up: centipedes that are both abnormally large and abnormally smart. In order to stem the tide, Helen brings down part of the wall to act as a barrier, but while it does keep the centipedes at bay it also leaves them with no way out of the caves. Tesla however, mentions that there’s a secret Cabal base hidden not too far from where they are which may be able to offer some idea as to they way out. However, once the arrive they find themselves again swarmed by the centipedes. The base is their nest, and worse yet, they have been altered by the remnants of the source blood that had leaked into the walls of the site.
Not wanting to let anyone else get their hands on the remnants of the Source Blood, Helen decides the only course of action is to blow up the nest along with the centipedes. However, the centipedes prove to be less than willing to come inside the nest, so Tesla stays behind to lure them in with his own blood, effectively sealing himself in at ground zero. However, he manages to save himself just in time by making a crude blast shield with his magnetic abilities.
This time, he decides to return to the Sanctuary for the time, mostly on account of a rather bizarre holographic map that Helen’s dad has bequeathed her. More interestingly, the city the map shows is not of earthly origin. After spending days poring over its secrets, they discover that there are further levels to the map, provided they can guess the password. Tesla naturally assumes that this will prove little problem after cracking the Enigma machine, despite the map’s being written in cuneiform, and proceeds to set about working on the password, despite Helen’s protests. As one might expect, he doesn’t guess it right on the first try and the map reacts with an electromagnetic pulse, knocking out the Sanctuary’s electronics. Tesla insists this is only a manner set back, but Helen tells him in no uncertain terms that if he wants to do something he can get the electricity running again.
The next morning, Tesla does indeed manage to get map running again. This time, however, it scans the both of them before promptly denying them access due to their vampiric blood. Where once the map stood, there is now a particle accelerator, which is slowly gathering enough power to destroy the entire Sanctuary. Tesla is able to slow the reaction, but only by keeping a hand on it. Unwilling to leave Tesla to his death, Helen suggests that he use his powers instead to create a shield around them and thus turn them ‘invisible’ to map. No sooner has he done so when the next level of the map opens up to them, leaving a 3D map of the world, with what seem to be miles of underground caverns beneath it. A map to another world, hidden away inside their own.
However, neither of them have much time to examine the map, because only a scant few days later a specter of their past arrives almost on their door step: Adam Worth, very much alive and just as crazy as ever. Or at least mostly alive, as the man is in dire need of medical attention. Once he awakens, his darker half informs them that Druitt holds the answers to their questions. This is a problem, however, since as far as Helen is aware none of them knows where Druitt is. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Tesla unhappily admits that he does, in fact know Druitt’s whereabouts. Druitt had come to him hoping that that Tesla’s electromagnetic abilities would be able to help him deal with his problems, and had made him promise that he wouldn’t tell Helen. Now that Helen knows his whereabouts, she wastes no time in going to find him.
While she’s out, Tesla and the others come to a rather sobering conclusion: Helen is dying of a rare form of radiation poisoning and the only cure lies in the city their map leads to - the city Adam Worth wants to return to. And with Helen ill, the Sanctuary charter says that the decision to go or not will fall to the Sanctuary’s second-in-command. In the end, the decision is made to go. They’ll show Adam the map, provided they can deal with his better half. However, even then, this is a process easier said then done, although Adam does seem to be better able to manipulate the map then they are. More to the point, in order to get into the tunnels themselves, they’ll need a keystone to unlock the way. Helen and Druitt head to track it down, leaving Will and Tesla to deal with Adam. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to be too interested in causing blatant havoc, and within relatively short order Helen and Druitt return with the keystone in hand. However, Helen also insists on the fact that she be the one to go. After all, they know that whoever they may find will not be particularly tolerant towards those of vampiric blood, and Tesla was only able to make a single bracelet meant to shield the effects of the source blood. So with keystone in hand, Helen and her second-in-command are teleported to the main doors courtesy of Druitt.
Tesla meanwhile, is left behind to keep things more-or-less running at the Sanctuary while not only keeping an eye on the tracking device Helen has but also Druitt and Worth, neither of whom particularly like each other. This is not the worst thing he has to deal with either, as not long after Helen enters the tunnels the signal cuts out. All three men are aware that there are any number of relatively mundane reasons this might have happened, but Druitt insists on going in after her. However, in order to do so, he needs to know where he’s going - jumping in blind could easily end with him entombed in rock. Adam, meanwhile, claims to have a better viewpoint of the tunnels, but they’ll need to be able to see through his eyes. In the end, they essentially download Adam’s memory to a computer and then feed the resulting information into the map to create a more visual map of the tunnels. However, in one last moment of assholishness, Druitt teleports away with Adam mere moments before Tesla grabs on to his hand, leaving Tesla all alone - and annoyed - in the Sanctuary.
Several months after the excursion to Hollow Earth, Helen and Tesla again join forces, this time to explore an ancient stronghold that they believe has ties to the culture of Praxis, the greatest city of Hollow Earth. However, they arrive to find that at some point the stronghold had been taken over by vampires and before Helen has time to finish telling Tesla to remove the shield bracelet that’s hiding his vampiric blood, he’s shot in the chest by an automated beam weapon. To make matters worse, the door then closes behind them. Fortunately, Tesla is able to use an electromagnetic shield to keep his internal organs where they ought to be, but the fact of the matter is that he’s still dying. Perhaps not as fast as he would otherwise, but dying none the less.
Tesla is willing to accept his death at this point, but Helen doesn’t share his sentiments, and turns to trying to find a way out. What she finds instead is the ancient queen of the vampires, resting in stasis inside of what appears to be a cocoon of crystal. If Helen can just manage to extract a small amount of her blood, then she should be able to re-awaken Tesla’s vampiric genes, or so she figures. She hadn’t planned on the crystal being as resilient as it was, though, and before she’s able to break through it, Tesla faints. Luckily, she is ultimately able to break through enough of the crystal to extract a small sample of the vampire queen’s blood and manages to reactivate Tesla’s vampiric genes just in the nick of time.
Within a matter of moments, Tesla’s once again on his feet, but there’s a more immediate problem facing them - Helen’s attempts at breaking the crystal have broken it’s structural integrity. Getting it’s occupant out, on the other hand, seems to be a daunting problem at best until Tesla puts his hand on the crystal and it quickly falls to pieces. Unfortunately, the newly-awoken vampire queen doesn’t take too well to learning that all that remains of her race are herself and Tesla (who she deems as nothing more than a half-blood mutt) and decides that it’s high time that she awakens the rest of her court in order to reclaim her rightful place. Helen is somewhat less than pleased by this idea, and while Tesla is generally alright the idea, the fact that the vampire queen proceeds to throw him down a pit trap doesn’t do much for his opinions on her and in relatively short order, a fight breaks out.
In the end, Helen offers to give the vampire queen the map to Hollow Earth along with the password to unlock it in exchange for information on how to leave the crypt. Somewhat mollified by the peace offering, she tells them how to leave, and Helen and Tesla proceed to hurry out, much to Tesla’s consternation. He needn’t have worried; as soon as the vampire queen unlocks the map it proceeds to scan her much like it had once scanned them before moving directly to the same particle accelerator that had nearly killed Helen and Tesla earlier. The only difference is that she can’t slow the reaction and the pair of them just manage to escape before a massive explosion puts an end not only to the queen and her court, but also to the stronghold itself as well as much of the surrounding area.
Supernatural Abilities: First and foremost, Tesla is a member of the species known as sanguine vampiris, also known as vampires. As a result, he is both more agile and stronger than a human would be. He also possesses a thoroughly potent healing ability, to the point that he can more-or-less shrug off getting shot, or being thrown off the higher floors of a high rise. Finally, he has a set of retractable claws in his fingers. These are just as durable as he is, and are honed to an almost razor sharpness.
In addition to these, he also has electromagnetic abilities that can most easily be summed up as being almost a weaker variety of Magneto’s abilities. He mostly seems to use it to pull metallic items to himself although he’s also capable of using it to slow down other electric or electromagnetic processes as well as creating electromagnetic shields.
He’s also unaffected by alcohol.
Supernatural Weaknesses: In Chicago, Tesla will find that not only have his agility and strength taken a hit, it also takes him longer to heal from things. In the case of injuries that would normally heal all but instantaneously, the may now take hours, and that figure will only increase as the injury gets worse. In addition, his magnetic abilities will take more effort, proportional to what he’s trying to do. Moving something the size of a serving plate will remain comparatively easy, but trying to move, say, a metal door will take both time and effort. As for his ability to create shields, that may simply fail to work at all.
Natural Abilities: Tesla is, to put things bluntly, a genius and being a vampire hasn’t changed that. If anything, his long years have given him time to pick up more than a few new tricks, although he’s been keeping out of the public eye lately. He also happens to be something of a natural polyglot; being fluent in eight different languages.
Possessions: Nothing more than the clothes on his back and the contents of his pockets.
Name: Sceadu
Age: 25
AIM / E-mail / LiveJournal: sceadugesceaft / dracogriff (at) gmail / hitokiri_neko
What characters do you play here already, if any? Axel, Aqua, Granny Weatherwax and Iskierka
[IC Information]
Character Name: Nikola Tesla
Series: Sanctuary
Gender: Male
Age: 155
Species: Sanguine vampiris (more or less)
Appearance: Coming in towards the taller end of average with short brown hair and brown eyes, Tesla really isn’t someone who stands out much, although he is decently good-looking at the very the least. He also can usually be found wearing some sort of variant on the theme of suit.
When he’s tapping into his vampiric genes his eyes turn completely black and his teeth turn into something more resembling fangs.
Personality: Nikola Tesla is not really a nice man. As a matter of fact, he tends to be something of asshole. The fact that he’s also arrogant and just a little self-centered doesn’t really help matters any. You see, the man is a genius, knows it, and sees no reason that shouldn’t keep him from reminding people of it. In short, he’s not really the kind of person who most people enjoy seeing, and his frequent attempts to recreate the vampire race certainly don’t help matters any.
However, this is not to say that he doesn’t have friends, or at least, people who are willing to tolerate his brand of hidden agendas. It’s just that generally speaking, these happen to be the rest of the Five, and thus the people who have seen his more altruistic moments - and it should be noted that he can be, and has been, more than willing to help out in more serious situations. It’s just that sooner or later he ends up reverting to usual ways.
History: Nikola Tesla was born in 1856. From there, he proceeded to live, and since a quick look at wikipedia can explain the further details of his early life, we’ll instead jump to the point at which canon starts to take a turn from history as we know it. Namely, the point at which he entered university. Oxford, to be precise, although how and why he was there is a question that has yet to be addressed. Nonetheless, he soon fell in with a group of fellow scientists: Montague John Druitt, Helen Magnus, James Watson, Nigel Griffin. Together, they became known as The Five (and were, for a brief moment, very nearly The Six), a group of scientists dedicated to pushing the boundaries of known science.
And then, one day, their lives were changed. You see, they’d come across a sample of rare, untainted vampire blood (hereafter referred to as the Source Blood) and had managed to create a serum of it. With opportunity thus in front of them, each of the group chose to take the step into evolution. Helen gained the gift of amazing longevity, Griffin became able to turn invisible, Druitt became able to teleport, and Watson’s intelligence grew to superhuman levels. But it was Tesla who changed the most - the serum reacted with his then-as-unknown latent vampiric genes. Effectively, he became a vampire. He also began to display a sort of minor ability to control electricity, but whether or not this was a side effect of the source blood is less then clear.
None the less, life (and science) continued on. For a while, it was even relative calm. And then, things began to go somewhat pear-shaped. A killer was loose on London, a killer that history would come to know as Jack the Ripper. Given his uncommon gift for detective work, Watson took the problem into his own hands; looking for the culprit. In the end, the culprit proved to be none other that Druitt himself.
But there was little time to dwell on this development. Another specter of The Five’s past had sprung up, this time in the form of Adam Worth, the man who had once made The Five nearly The Six. Bitter over the loss of his daughter, and his mistaken belief that Helen had refused to help save her, he had become a monster. Or rather, he had developed a second, much more monstrous personality. And when that second personality was poised on the threshold of destroying England itself, The Five were called in to see to it that he didn’t. Despite some initial disinterest in the idea, they were eventually swayed by the promise of an official pardon for Druitt as well as the backing of the King for Helen’s Sanctuary network. And so they saw to it that Worth was chased very nearly across the entirety of the countryside - the last they saw of him was him throwing himself over a steep cliff to avoid being shot by Magnus.
The next time Nikola Tesla stepped into the limelight was during World War 2. He was the one to first crack the Enigma code, and his autotype - which could pass secret messages that couldn’t be intercepted - helped the allied forces. Admittedly, even then it wasn’t fool-proof - on least one occasion it was by a mole to almost disastrous effect - but there was no denying that his work had a great effect on the war. And none of these were more notable then his attempt to foster peace by selling the plans for his death ray to every Allied nation.[?]
Unfortunately, while Tesla’s attempts to make good on his invention could possibly have been considered kind-hearted, the fact of the matter is that it backfired. Rather spectacularly, as a matter of fact, and in relatively short order, he found himself a wanted man by every major spy agency. Needless to say, this didn’t go over well, and with pressure mounting from all sides, he did the last thing he could think of. He died. Or at least, that’s what the world was led to believe. He’d actually gotten in contact with Helen Magnus and arranged to fake his own death. Thus, he ‘died’, a bitter old man without a penny to his name.
And then he promptly dropped out of sight for the next sixty years. No one saw him, no one heard of him, and not even the rest of The Five heard from him. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until [year] that he next appeared in something like the public eye.
As a matter of fact he didn’t resurface until 2008, at a conference in Rome that Helen was speaking at. However, he himself didn’t enter the conference room. Instead he sent a note to be delivered to her: a note along the lines of the fact that her very life was in danger and that she needed to leave the room immediately. With no real reason not to distrust him, she did so, and just in the nick of time as no sooner had she done when agents of one of the enemies (known simply as the Cabal) of the Sanctuary came rushing into the room. Conveniently enough, Tesla knew a way out through the catacombs of the city. Naturally, the agents of the Cabal followed them, and the less-than-friendly conversations that ensued revealed their true intent. They weren’t after Helen; they were after Tesla, and with good reason. He had discovered a method to turn newly-dead corpses into vampires. But there was a side effect he hadn’t intended. He could raise the dead, and grant them the abilities of sanguine vampiris... but the new vampires were as dumb as a sack of bricks.
It was for this reason that he’d gotten back in contact with Helen, since he’d hoped that he’d help him come up with a strain of vampires that was all that they had originally been. Unfortunately for him, Helen had no interest in ruling the world. Tesla, in turn, took this less then well and things might well of gotten more than a little bit violent had it not been for the timely arrival of Druitt. Or at least, the fist that he stuck rather literally Tesla’s abdomen by virtue of teleportation.
Given the severity of the wound, it took even Tesla’s supernatural healing ability to bounce back and the next time he appeared was several months later. While he was recovering, the Cabal had created a virus intended to induce violent insanity in all abnormals. The test run only affected a few communities of abnormals, but the Cabal were paused to launch a second, and even greater dispersion bomb. With the world poised on the brink of all out war between humans and abnormals, what remains of the Five convene to recover the last remnants of the ancient vampiric blood that had given them their powers, on the basis that it may contain some manner of antigen to the disease. The only problem? They’ll need all of the Five to reclaim it, and Griffin has been dead for decades. However, as things happen to turn out, his granddaughter is alive and well - and more importantly, bears the legacy of her grandfather.
Tesla, however, is yet again nowhere to be found and with no time to hunt him down, an expeditionary force is mounted to the last resting place of the Source Blood: Bhalasaam, the last great city of the vampires, and nothing more than ruins when they arrive. The destruction isn’t recent - it appears to date to approximately the turn of the twentieth century - but it does make finding the entrance to the subterranean labyrinth that holds the Source Blood a daunting task, until at last Watson recognizes a small part of the architecture and uses that to extrapolate the entrance to the labyrinth. And who should they find once they reach the bottom but Tesla himself?
As it turns out, he’d gone there to learn what he could of his ancestors... and more than likely scope out the trials required to acquire the Source Blood. Thus, with The Five more-or-less reconvened, they set out to their respective trials. The trials are brutal, and in some cases very nearly fatal, but for a few slight errors they manage to pass the trials and gain access to the source blood.
The trip, however, was not without casualties. Shortly after they’d reclaimed the Source Blood the machine that had been keeping Watson alive failed, and so with a heavy heart the remaining members of the group returned to the Sanctuary. To add insult to injury, shortly after they returned, the source blood was stolen by a sleeper agent of the Cabal. Worse still, the sleeper agent is Helen’s daughter.
Six weeks later Tesla has, after much work, managed to create a cure for the Cabal’s virus neutralizing that particular problem. Yet there’s still the matter that the Cabal have both Helen’s daughter as well as the Source Blood and appear to be after several young people with perfectly normal DNA. The reason for this becomes apparent after following a potential lead leads Helen, Druitt and Tesla neatly into a trap. They find Helen’s daughter, yes, but she’s been turned into a sort of superabnormal with the combined abilities of both Tesla and Druitt and all three are forced to retreat. Worse still, the Cabal has copied that same DNA pattern onto that of the young people they had kidnapped, leaving them with a veritable troupe of superabnormal soldiers.
Furious over the state of things, Helen manages to get in touch with one of the members of the Cabal who informs her that they would be glad to return Helen’s daughter in exchange for the Sanctuary Network. Helen, quite naturally, refuses and instead tasks Tesla with creating a weapon that will disable her daughter’s new abilities but leave her unharmed while the rest of the Sanctuary prepares for war. Meanwhile, the Cabal strikes, taking out the Tokyo Sanctuary before Helen is even able to send back-up. And so, the Sanctuary Network goes to war. However, the superabnormals prove too powerful a threat to handle, and after more than a few Sanctuaries are destroyed, Helen and the rest of her team move to the UK Sanctuary, where the superabnormals are believed to strike next.
The battle that follows is something of a trial by fire. Tesla’s hastily built weapon proves to be ineffective, and only the fact that the superabnormals’ healing factor proves to be unable to keep up with a fire element ultimately saves the UK Sanctuary. The superabnormals are still very much alive, for all that they’ve been forced to retreat and that leaves just one thing for Helen and her team. Protecting their own home. This time, however, Helen gives Tesla a vial of her daughter’s blood, after admitting that what she’d asked him to do before was an impossible task. With the last piece of the puzzle in place, Tesla sets about modifying the weapon while the rest of crew bring up the Sanctuary’s defenses.
The Cabal, however, are prepared for this, and manage to sneak a virus into the system, bringing down the Sanctuary’s shields moments before the superabnormals attack. This time, however the Sanctuary holds the advantage, thanks to Tesla’s weapon. It’s a small advantage, but it lets them hold their own until they can bring the shields back online. This in turn negates the superabnormal’s teleportation, and within a relatively short time, the only two remain: Helen’s daughter and one other. Faced with the prospect of either killing her mother or letting the other remaining superabnormal do the same, Helen’s daughter manages to break through her conditioning just enough to grab the other and teleport the both of them into oblivion courtesy of the Sanctuary’s shields.
And so it is that yet again life settles into the general everyday business of the Sanctuary, as gathered forces disperse back to where they’d come from.
Of course, neither is this the last time Helen and company run into Tesla. Several months after the death of Helen’s daughter, a series of cases in which dead teenagers are refusing to stay dead leads to drug clinic in Mexico, run by one Dr. Baumschlager. Or, as they happen to know him better: Nikola Tesla. He’s once again been up to his usual tricks, and in the course of curing poor drug-addled teens he’s also been turning them into vampires. However, according to him none of them should have been turning into vampires so soon, since he’d had the foresight to put a time-lapse trigger on the transformation. But there was one very important thing he’d forgotten: death. A violent death, in particular, would be more than enough to force the vampiric genes into the forefront. However, he and Helen are unable to start discussing how to reverse the situation before the newly-minted vampires arrive and kidnap Tesla. With his blood and his knowledge of their species, they now have everything they need to take over the world... and Tesla’s not invited, a fact that he takes less than well, given that he’s the one who masterminded the whole affair in the first place.
Helen, meanwhile, has returned to the Sanctuary in search of the failsafe that she knows Tesla would have built. After very nearly turning the Sanctuary inside out, she finds it, although she’s at a loss as to how to use it. So she does the only thing she can think of. She takes the weapon to it’s creator, and promptly finds that Tesla has somehow managed ingratiate himself to the young vampires and directs them to escort her to a small room in the back of suite and tie her up. However, it turns out that was just a ruse, as Tesla himself follows not long thereafter and asks for the failsafe.
Under the circumstances, she has little choice but to give it to him, and with it in hand he proceeds to de-vamp the newly minted vampires. However, the final vampire to be de-vamped pulls him into the devamper’s effective range, depowering Tesla as well. Depressed over the fact that he’s now effectively normal, Tesla returns to the Sanctuary with Helen, in the hopes that the de-vamping process can be reversed. Unfortunately, this is not to be the case - the de-vamped genes reject any attempt to change them to their original state. However, at the last moment, Tesla develops a sort of magnetic ability and decides that he ‘can work with that’ before setting out into the world at large again.
However, it’s not long at all before he lands himself yet again, this time while exploring a series of caves in the Columbian highlands. Taking advantage of the caves’ natural magnetism (the reason he was there in the first place) he sends a message to the last remaining autotype in existence: ‘SOS’. Conveniently, the autotype happens to be in possession of Helen Magnus, and she mounts a rescue, even knowing full well that it might be a trap. It turns out to be no such thing, since she and the others arrive to find that Tesla quite literally tied up. Cocooned, really, in what seem to be almost abnormally strong natural fibers.
While they’re working on cutting him loose, Tesla explains that the caves are inhabited and that the inhabitants are more than a little territorial. As a matter of fact, they’ve no sooner cut him down then the inhabitants in question show up: centipedes that are both abnormally large and abnormally smart. In order to stem the tide, Helen brings down part of the wall to act as a barrier, but while it does keep the centipedes at bay it also leaves them with no way out of the caves. Tesla however, mentions that there’s a secret Cabal base hidden not too far from where they are which may be able to offer some idea as to they way out. However, once the arrive they find themselves again swarmed by the centipedes. The base is their nest, and worse yet, they have been altered by the remnants of the source blood that had leaked into the walls of the site.
Not wanting to let anyone else get their hands on the remnants of the Source Blood, Helen decides the only course of action is to blow up the nest along with the centipedes. However, the centipedes prove to be less than willing to come inside the nest, so Tesla stays behind to lure them in with his own blood, effectively sealing himself in at ground zero. However, he manages to save himself just in time by making a crude blast shield with his magnetic abilities.
This time, he decides to return to the Sanctuary for the time, mostly on account of a rather bizarre holographic map that Helen’s dad has bequeathed her. More interestingly, the city the map shows is not of earthly origin. After spending days poring over its secrets, they discover that there are further levels to the map, provided they can guess the password. Tesla naturally assumes that this will prove little problem after cracking the Enigma machine, despite the map’s being written in cuneiform, and proceeds to set about working on the password, despite Helen’s protests. As one might expect, he doesn’t guess it right on the first try and the map reacts with an electromagnetic pulse, knocking out the Sanctuary’s electronics. Tesla insists this is only a manner set back, but Helen tells him in no uncertain terms that if he wants to do something he can get the electricity running again.
The next morning, Tesla does indeed manage to get map running again. This time, however, it scans the both of them before promptly denying them access due to their vampiric blood. Where once the map stood, there is now a particle accelerator, which is slowly gathering enough power to destroy the entire Sanctuary. Tesla is able to slow the reaction, but only by keeping a hand on it. Unwilling to leave Tesla to his death, Helen suggests that he use his powers instead to create a shield around them and thus turn them ‘invisible’ to map. No sooner has he done so when the next level of the map opens up to them, leaving a 3D map of the world, with what seem to be miles of underground caverns beneath it. A map to another world, hidden away inside their own.
However, neither of them have much time to examine the map, because only a scant few days later a specter of their past arrives almost on their door step: Adam Worth, very much alive and just as crazy as ever. Or at least mostly alive, as the man is in dire need of medical attention. Once he awakens, his darker half informs them that Druitt holds the answers to their questions. This is a problem, however, since as far as Helen is aware none of them knows where Druitt is. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Tesla unhappily admits that he does, in fact know Druitt’s whereabouts. Druitt had come to him hoping that that Tesla’s electromagnetic abilities would be able to help him deal with his problems, and had made him promise that he wouldn’t tell Helen. Now that Helen knows his whereabouts, she wastes no time in going to find him.
While she’s out, Tesla and the others come to a rather sobering conclusion: Helen is dying of a rare form of radiation poisoning and the only cure lies in the city their map leads to - the city Adam Worth wants to return to. And with Helen ill, the Sanctuary charter says that the decision to go or not will fall to the Sanctuary’s second-in-command. In the end, the decision is made to go. They’ll show Adam the map, provided they can deal with his better half. However, even then, this is a process easier said then done, although Adam does seem to be better able to manipulate the map then they are. More to the point, in order to get into the tunnels themselves, they’ll need a keystone to unlock the way. Helen and Druitt head to track it down, leaving Will and Tesla to deal with Adam. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to be too interested in causing blatant havoc, and within relatively short order Helen and Druitt return with the keystone in hand. However, Helen also insists on the fact that she be the one to go. After all, they know that whoever they may find will not be particularly tolerant towards those of vampiric blood, and Tesla was only able to make a single bracelet meant to shield the effects of the source blood. So with keystone in hand, Helen and her second-in-command are teleported to the main doors courtesy of Druitt.
Tesla meanwhile, is left behind to keep things more-or-less running at the Sanctuary while not only keeping an eye on the tracking device Helen has but also Druitt and Worth, neither of whom particularly like each other. This is not the worst thing he has to deal with either, as not long after Helen enters the tunnels the signal cuts out. All three men are aware that there are any number of relatively mundane reasons this might have happened, but Druitt insists on going in after her. However, in order to do so, he needs to know where he’s going - jumping in blind could easily end with him entombed in rock. Adam, meanwhile, claims to have a better viewpoint of the tunnels, but they’ll need to be able to see through his eyes. In the end, they essentially download Adam’s memory to a computer and then feed the resulting information into the map to create a more visual map of the tunnels. However, in one last moment of assholishness, Druitt teleports away with Adam mere moments before Tesla grabs on to his hand, leaving Tesla all alone - and annoyed - in the Sanctuary.
Several months after the excursion to Hollow Earth, Helen and Tesla again join forces, this time to explore an ancient stronghold that they believe has ties to the culture of Praxis, the greatest city of Hollow Earth. However, they arrive to find that at some point the stronghold had been taken over by vampires and before Helen has time to finish telling Tesla to remove the shield bracelet that’s hiding his vampiric blood, he’s shot in the chest by an automated beam weapon. To make matters worse, the door then closes behind them. Fortunately, Tesla is able to use an electromagnetic shield to keep his internal organs where they ought to be, but the fact of the matter is that he’s still dying. Perhaps not as fast as he would otherwise, but dying none the less.
Tesla is willing to accept his death at this point, but Helen doesn’t share his sentiments, and turns to trying to find a way out. What she finds instead is the ancient queen of the vampires, resting in stasis inside of what appears to be a cocoon of crystal. If Helen can just manage to extract a small amount of her blood, then she should be able to re-awaken Tesla’s vampiric genes, or so she figures. She hadn’t planned on the crystal being as resilient as it was, though, and before she’s able to break through it, Tesla faints. Luckily, she is ultimately able to break through enough of the crystal to extract a small sample of the vampire queen’s blood and manages to reactivate Tesla’s vampiric genes just in the nick of time.
Within a matter of moments, Tesla’s once again on his feet, but there’s a more immediate problem facing them - Helen’s attempts at breaking the crystal have broken it’s structural integrity. Getting it’s occupant out, on the other hand, seems to be a daunting problem at best until Tesla puts his hand on the crystal and it quickly falls to pieces. Unfortunately, the newly-awoken vampire queen doesn’t take too well to learning that all that remains of her race are herself and Tesla (who she deems as nothing more than a half-blood mutt) and decides that it’s high time that she awakens the rest of her court in order to reclaim her rightful place. Helen is somewhat less than pleased by this idea, and while Tesla is generally alright the idea, the fact that the vampire queen proceeds to throw him down a pit trap doesn’t do much for his opinions on her and in relatively short order, a fight breaks out.
In the end, Helen offers to give the vampire queen the map to Hollow Earth along with the password to unlock it in exchange for information on how to leave the crypt. Somewhat mollified by the peace offering, she tells them how to leave, and Helen and Tesla proceed to hurry out, much to Tesla’s consternation. He needn’t have worried; as soon as the vampire queen unlocks the map it proceeds to scan her much like it had once scanned them before moving directly to the same particle accelerator that had nearly killed Helen and Tesla earlier. The only difference is that she can’t slow the reaction and the pair of them just manage to escape before a massive explosion puts an end not only to the queen and her court, but also to the stronghold itself as well as much of the surrounding area.
Supernatural Abilities: First and foremost, Tesla is a member of the species known as sanguine vampiris, also known as vampires. As a result, he is both more agile and stronger than a human would be. He also possesses a thoroughly potent healing ability, to the point that he can more-or-less shrug off getting shot, or being thrown off the higher floors of a high rise. Finally, he has a set of retractable claws in his fingers. These are just as durable as he is, and are honed to an almost razor sharpness.
In addition to these, he also has electromagnetic abilities that can most easily be summed up as being almost a weaker variety of Magneto’s abilities. He mostly seems to use it to pull metallic items to himself although he’s also capable of using it to slow down other electric or electromagnetic processes as well as creating electromagnetic shields.
He’s also unaffected by alcohol.
Supernatural Weaknesses: In Chicago, Tesla will find that not only have his agility and strength taken a hit, it also takes him longer to heal from things. In the case of injuries that would normally heal all but instantaneously, the may now take hours, and that figure will only increase as the injury gets worse. In addition, his magnetic abilities will take more effort, proportional to what he’s trying to do. Moving something the size of a serving plate will remain comparatively easy, but trying to move, say, a metal door will take both time and effort. As for his ability to create shields, that may simply fail to work at all.
Natural Abilities: Tesla is, to put things bluntly, a genius and being a vampire hasn’t changed that. If anything, his long years have given him time to pick up more than a few new tricks, although he’s been keeping out of the public eye lately. He also happens to be something of a natural polyglot; being fluent in eight different languages.
Possessions: Nothing more than the clothes on his back and the contents of his pockets.