Jack Maroon (WIP)

Name: Jack Maroon
Age at Embrace/Physical Age: 35
Age: 92
Vampire Age: 57
Date of Embrace: December 22nd, 1955
Date of Birth: August 8th, 1920
Height: 6’2
Weight: 180 lbs.
Race (as a human): Caucasian
Gender: Male
Eyes: Dark Red, originally Brown
Hair: Dark Brown
Society/Group: Crimson Court, Blood Hounds


Appearance:

Spoiler:

Personality:
For a vampire of the Crimson Court, Jack isn’t very aristocratic or eloquent, preferring to be blunt and to the point about most things. He is a rather cynical invidual, with a bleak outlook on his unlife, and the world in general. Jack hides his general despondence and disappointment in the world behind a veil of apathy. To distract himself from his existential malaise, Jack drowns himself in his work, just as he did in his human life. He takes no pleasure in his job, tracking down and executing those who breach the Masquerade, and any other enemies of the Court. He does however maintain a quiet sense of pride in his work, and won’t rest easy with a job left unfinished.
Despite his current violent occupation, negative perspective and apathetic demeanor, he’s not an evil man, and actually has a reasonably strong sense of justice and morality. And even though he’s not the nicest man around, and not the most compassionate, his heart is also devoid of cruelty; a rare quality among vampires.




History:
I was born ninety-two years ago, and died thirty-five years after. My father had fought in the big war, I mean the first, and it was after the war that he met the woman who would later become his first wife, and my only mother. She was a French girl; back then she was young and pretty, and longed for the life outside of her quaint countryside village. To her, a handsome American soldier from a family with money probably seemed like a lifetime opportunity.
Dad was tired of fighting, he was lonely in the way all men are, and, well, real horny.
It didn’t take long for them to start making babies. First my older brother, then me, and finally my sister. It took them a couple of years, children, and the prohibition of alcohol to find out that they didn’t really like each other that much after all.
I’m not going to bother with the details, but it wasn’t pretty. Mom left, and was only able to take Jeanette. Thomas and I stayed with Dad; that’s what he wanted, and as always, that’s what he got.
My childhood was unremarkable; it had its ups and lows, and I made it through alright. Did well at school, and went to college. Then came the war. A war that had nothing to do with me, but still had me convinced I was fighting for the right cause; that I was one of the good guys. Well, I’m not.

Ain’t much to tell from that point. Saw some bad things, did some too. We fought the japs, and we won. The bombs. Terrible way to win a war. Even more terrible way to lose one. Went back home immediately, home to Chicago. Was welcomed as a hero by what little family and friends I had. Treated like one too, at least for a while, until the wave of enthusiasm passed over, and people realized all they were celebrating was that a young man had left the city, and a murderer came back home.
That didn’t get to me though. I guess that during the war, I always knew I’d come back a changed man. But I also expected, in my youthful naivete, and during the desperation of war, that home would have changed too, only for the better. I ended up idealizing my home, my light in the darkness. What I hadn’t prepared for was that home was no better than it was before I left. In fact, one could say that the war had actually opened my eyes to all the injustice, all of the goddamned scumbags that walked the streets, preying on the weak. I took all the rage and madness that had welled up inside of me, and poured it into my job as a police officer.
I was pretty good at it. Made my way to detective lickety-split. A lot happened in those years, though most of it’s not important for my story. Got married, cheated, got divorced. Even with a wife, I was still lonely. The way all men are, when it comes down to it.
No need to monologue about that. More important things need explaining. The job. Got partnered with a guy called Alex. Alex Carson. Carved out of bedrock he was, Carson. Always told me I had the right build, but kept myself too scrawny. I never did eat well. Together we solved cases. That’s not all as Scooby-Doo as it sounds though. It wasn’t pretty work, like in the flicks; more often than not we stumbled on dead ends, had to watch the bad guys go free, and saw evil prevail right in front of Lady Justice’s eyes. Dumb broad’s blind as a bat.

Carson had a good heart, unlike me. Where I set myself on the job to forget about the rest of my life, he did it because he just wanted to do the right thing. Bring the heat to the thieves, rapists, gangers and the whole diseased murderous underbelly of the city. Wouldn’t expect it from him when you saw him though. Heck, he looked more like a crook than the guys we slapped in irons.
Yeah, good ol’ Carson. When he died, the city lost one of its last decent men. I had been suspended from duty a few weeks before it happened. I got caught using some confiscated illegal substances. Had to go through rehab sessions and narcotics anonymous meetings then, but I suppose I was damned lucky the chief kept a lid on it and didn’t take my badge.
Not that it helped. It only made things worse. Without the job, my nasty habits only increased; I found other ways to supply myself. A good detective knows his way around the underworld, and I gotta say, I was pretty good, at least in that department.
And while I was getting hooked up on whatever drug I could get my hands on, Carson found an obsession of his own. A case that the brass wanted buried so bad that it just screamed conspiracy. He had been investigating the bizarre murder of a family of four, all of them completely drained of blood. Without a single wound. He couldn’t let go of the case, not even when he was explicitly ordered to stay away from it. Even today, I don’t know what drove him to carry on his investigation even when the whole world tried to bar him from it. If it were me, I’d be doing it just because I wanted to figure out the big mystery, but I would’ve given up when given so much resistance. No, Carson was a better man than me. I think he wanted justice. In a world so uncertain, an existence so fleeting, people need to cling to concepts like justice, or love, or goodness. Empty words filled with meaning. He and I had seen horror before, but this case was so bizarre, so macabre that it made something snap in Alex’s head. He tirelessly followed lead after lead, getting blocked at every single turn, yet stubbornly persisting. He told me on the phone once that he’d solve the problem, even if it meant his death. He believed he was on to something big. That somehow, if he managed to blow the lid off of the whole affair, and revealed the big secret, every wrong would be righted, and there’d be a big, happy ending.
He was found dead in an alleyway, drained of blood yet without a single wound on him. When I saw it, I couldn’t help but think he got his happy ending anyway. He had died with a smile on his face.

I didn’t understand why until it was too late, but seeing the smile on my dead partner’s face, something inside of me told me I needed to know. I needed to find out, even if it got me killed as well. It was a reckless thing to do without neither gun nor badge, but like I said, I knew my way around the seedy underbelly of Chicago. I got myself a gun and a fake badge and started looking in the all the places where Alex had looked, and more. Places that scared me senseless. Cannibals, Satanists, ‘witches’, alchemists; at the end of my search there wasn’t a weirdo in town I hadn’t questioned or interrogated already. And all for naught.
Then it dawned on me; Alex never once told me he’d found a promising lead or any sort of breakthrough. He never found what he was looking for him. It found him, just like it eventually found me. Vampire.
Back earlier I’d have laughed if someone told me vampires were real, and that the perp had actually been a rogue vampire who had broken the secret vampire rules. Turns out that’s actually the gist of it. She was surprisingly polite, and even rather friendly. Even when she took my gun, threw me on the ground and drained me to near death. Then she gave me a choice, the same choice she had given my partner. Did I want to live, and fill the ranks of the undead, becoming the very monster I had been trying to track down, or did I want to die, defiant till the very end, finding bitter comfort in having found the truth. Carson chose the latter.


Main Stats
Strength 3
Dexterity 3
Intelligence 3
Perception 5
Regeneration 4
Durability 3

Skills
Melee Weapons 2 (Focus: Knives)
Firearms 4 (Focus: Revolvers and pistols)
Brawl 3 (Style:Brutal Efficiency)
Stealth 4




Feats:
Entrancing Bite (Crimson Court)

Tough Bastard
4 points

Blood Hound
0 points
Gains 5 extra WP to start with.


Flaws:

Mirror, Mirror 1
Faulty Regeneration 1
Running Water 1
Leashed 0

Equipment