app for thediadem

[haemophile]

Player Information

Player: Theresa
Contact: PM for Official Mod Business; otherwise bloodmoney or snowscenery @ discord
Invitation OR characters played: TDM invite
Are you over 18?: Yes very


Character Information

Character: Laszlo Cravensworth
Canon: What We Do in the Shadows (post-series)
Age: 313 years old. He physically appears to be in his mid-40s.
History: This only goes through Season 3 but honestly he doesn't change very much

Possessions:

• Small burlap bag of British soil (he cannot sleep without this)
  
• A smoking pipe
  
• A magical pungi flute which draws animals to him and allows him to place them into a pliable trance (completely fine with nixing it, just let me know)
  
• An extremely ugly hat that may or may not be made of witch skin and may or may not be cursed. Basically if you put it on, something unfortunate and stupid will immediately happen to you. (I'm just planning on using this for flavor if I need an impetus for something idiotic to happen, so again, just let me know if you want me to nix this)

Weapon: Rapier, double-edged steel blade

Powers/Abilities:
Laszlo is a vampire, so he comes with all the standard vampire abilities: flight*, bat transformation, telekinesis, wall climbing, hypnosis**, and superhuman strength, speed, durability, and senses. Specific to Laszlo are his abilities to turn into a cat and to speak with animals. As the living dead, he doesn't need to breathe, either.

He is functionally immortal and cannot be killed except by sunlight/fire, being staked in the heart, or by decapitation. Injuries will heal quickly, depending on the severity: a small cut will heal in a matter of seconds, but recovering from dismemberment will take months, if not years. He also comes with the standard vampire weaknesses to silver, holy water, consecrated ground, crosses, etc. though these just cause discomfort and are not fatal.

*I'm just going to have him plummet to the ground if he tries to fly more than a quarter mile in any direction.

**Typically, vampires in WWDITS can use hypnosis to make humans do their bidding or cause them to hallucinate. Laszlo is not very good at it and only really uses it to wipe people's immediate memories to cover up something stupid he's just done. I would obviously ask permission before doing this to another player character, but if you would like me to remove this ability altogether, just let me know!


Application Questions

Who is the most important person in their life and why? What might be different if this person hadn't been around?
The most important person in his life is absolutely his wife Nadja. She is the one who turned him into a vampire, which he sees as the greatest thing that ever happened to him; even though he surrounded himself with debauchery and hedonism as a human, he never felt true happiness until he was made a bloodthirsty creature of the night. Vampirism affords him a certain freedom of the societal norms he finds to be suffocating and constraining, in addition to allowing him to embrace darkness and depravity beyond human limitations.

He is also wildly in love with her and she is his motivation for a great many things, including creating a horrible Frankensteinish monster for the sole purpose of protecting her in his absence. Nadja has done a remarkable amount of emotional labor with Laszlo, spending hundreds of years helping him overcome his trust issues and apparently sometimes even being the reason he remembers to feed himself.

Without Nadja, Laszlo would have died a bitter and unhappy human after a bitter and unhappy human life. If he had never met her, it's unlikely he would have ever fallen in love, learned to cope with the emotional trauma of his childhood, found a sense of purpose, or even experienced true happiness.

Is there an event in your character's life that they'd do differently? How so and why?
Laszlo tends not to have regrets. It's difficult for him to admit mistakes in the first place, so he primarily goes through life blaming others for any difficulties that have befallen him. His very poor relationship with his father is probably the only thing he wishes turned out differently, though he of course does not take any responsibility for it.

His father's cruel parenting style meant that Laszlo grew up learning not to trust anyone and to carefully guard his emotions, which is probably how he wound up being middle aged and unmarried in the first place, something that was socially bizarre in the 18th century; if he had tried to reconcile with his father, it's possible he would have had a completely different life. On the other hand, that completely different life would not have leant itself to becoming a vampire and falling in love with Nadja, so it's difficult for him to really regret anything in his life when it's led him to where he is now.

Of course, he also once turned a baby into a vampire due to boredom, which is a definite no-no in vampire society. He does regret that, if only because the whole situation is a little awkward. Should he have done it in the first place? No, probably not. Does he want to visit the vampire baby and attempt to make up for his lapse in judgement? No, and stop talking about it.

What's the greatest challenge you foresee your character facing in the setting?
Laszlo has spent the better part of the past two centuries being largely unproductive and only rarely leaving his neighborhood, let alone his house, so being constantly on the move will be wildly different. As a general rule, he also doesn't really 'work' for anything other than his own amusement, so having to actually do things for money is going to be quite a change.

He doesn't like being in debt to anyone, so I anticipate him trying to pay off his vehicle debt as quickly as possible. Beyond that, it will require some cajoling to get him to pay attention to anything other than his own shit, but he is also a huge snob so the promise of better lodgings will likely motivate him. Although his home in Staten Island is old and worn, it was luxurious in its time, and he is used to a certain level of comfort that is just not going to be available to him without actually putting some effort in.

He also, like, doesn't really know how to drive. So that is going to be a small hurdle as well.

What's the easiest thing you foresee your character adapting to in the setting?
The overall bizarre nature of the setting probably won't bother him very much. Laszlo is both personally familiar with horror tropes and extremely skeptical of the supernatural, giving him a baseline of a pretty blasé reaction to general weirdness; being a vampire, his wheelhouse is mostly in the gothic horror genre, but the basic vibes of despair and dread are there. I anticipate him getting involved in solving the overall mystery of the setting in scientific terms, mostly to sate his own curiosity and just to prove that he can.


Samples

Sample: Link