My AB OCs: Ruthven Strongmore
Jul. 13th, 2013 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratOh, this fucker. He started as just a name in the background of the English swanmane refugees in an AB roleplay group I was in, just an NPC villain from the past of my rebel leader swan, but like so many characters of mine, he started to grow beyond what I needed for that, to the point I'm going to transfer him to my own stories as a major villain (I'm the one who created him and said background for the English swans, so the rest of my group is okay with me keeping the creative rights to him, they're super cool people like that).
Anyway. Lord Ruthven Strongmore is an Earthmover-line vampire who can call swans, and as a result rules over all the swanmanes in England. We've seen a lot of MotCs in the series who rule over the therian counterparts of their respective animals to call, but England is a whole damn country, albeit a small one, so he's meant to be a really damn powerful vamp. Of course, said canon MotCs limits to just therians in their cities probably also has a lot to do with the fact that MotCs in other cities won't have them controlling the therians in theirs, so there's that too, but I digress. Point is, Ruthven is a Big Bad tier dude, and he can also call earthquakes like Mr. Oliver. The fact he controls the ground but also summons something that flies is kind of...incongruous, I guess...but last I checked there's no implication in canon that your animal to call has to somehow complement your bloodline. Plus this means I will one day get to use some wonderfully dramatic line about how he can control "Heaven and Earth" or something like that, and I live for that kind of cheese.
He resides in Blackstone Manor, which is built on the fictional Blackstone Moor, his demesne (land owned by a manor lord in the feudal system) when alive. I keep the specific location unknown/ambiguous, but I hint that it's probably somewhere in the Pennines, possibly West Pennine Moors. He's obviously not a Master of any city (though the small towns surrounding the moors are notably lacking any vampire leaders...) and he doesn't have a 'Kiss' per se in the traditional sense (which is good, because I cannot imagine him ever using that word) but he does have a number of vampires and non-swan therians there with him. The therians are paid to be there and work for him at keeping the swans in line during the day and making sure they don't do anything to him while he's asleep, as well as being food for the vamps, while the vampires are blood-bonded to him the way that they would be to a MotC and have various other jobs under him. Some of these jobs are, I'm sure, darkly glamorous tasks as befitting to the children of the night, and some are probably creepy-cool ones related to Ruthven's interest in Weird Science and the barn that's been converted to a laboratory...but some are also more along the lines of taking care of the livestock that he has there for the therians to hunt when full moon comes each month (on-site food provided; for a therian, that's as essential in a job contract as dental plans and workers comp!)
There are always a number of swanmanes on the moor with him too. However, which swanmanes they are changes. The entire swan population of England is never there (or at least, not usually); instead, they're on rotation, a few families with him at a time. There's no reason he *needs* to have them there, but, like everything he does, it serves a purpose, and that purpose is to remind them that he is in control, that he ultimately gets to decide what they do with their lives, that he can make them uproot themselves from their jobs, friends, and community anytime he wants and that if he can do that to them, he can do a whole lot more, so they had better just keep that in mind. See, Ruthven knows he has to keep on top of the whole psychological conditioning deal, just being able to control them with their beasts isn't enough. Swans are vicious fucking angry balls of evil rage by nature, and he doesn't want ANY chance of them ever even THINKING about another rebellion (there's been one already...it didn't work). Also, some swanmanes are there long-term for ballet training in a barn that's been converted to a dance studio. More on that later.
Ruthven runs the swanmanes very efficiently and practically. Cruel, yes, but it's all-business with him, not like how the Anitaverse villains (Chimera, Raina, etc.) always seemed to relish being evil just for kicks (though he doesn't feel the least bit bad about it either). He's a pragmatic person by nature, and that means he doesn't leave himself open to the same risks as other villains either. For instance, if this were the ABverse as written by LKH, his ruling the swans would have involved a lot of rape (always with the rape!) and maybe some pointless torture thrown in just to show what a Complete Monster he is. Except doing that would definitely foster rebellion faster than you could say 'cliche'. Taxing them (yup, they pay tithes to him, just like the werewolves did to Marcus) is comparatively a lot less upsetting to them than that would be, and benefits him far more. Not that there isn't going to be torture if someone gives him a reason, of course, but sadism for its own sake just isn't a wise decision at all from what he's seen of other vampires who tried stuff like this before in various cases. Or, vengeance. Ruthven doesn't do vengeance. He doesn't make things personal. It just causes problems and weaknesses. If he had a chance to, he'd certainly kill Gaspard (the swanmane who led the first rebellion against him) but that's because it's the practically thing to do, since as long as Gaspard is alive Gaspard is probably going to be trying to kill Ruthven too.
Just because he's impersonal, however, doesn't mean he's any less awful, just that he's all the more effective for it. He employs a lot of psychological tactics against the swans under his control to make even them, vicious angry things though swans are, believe that trying revolt again would be futile. He often punishes the group for the sins of the individual, so that no martyrs are made for the others to rally around and because people who would risk themselves aren't likely to risk others too along with them. As a note, Ruthven has made the failure of the rebellion work for him by pointing to as a 'see, this is what happens!' example for any swans who might have similar ideas. Anita's mass rape of ALL THE SWANMANES IN AMERICA is also now something he can point to as 'See, this is why you need ME to protect you!' THANKS, ANITA! He's really, really good at thinking up all the ways the swans could throw another coup, could slip in a holy item, could set a trap, etc., and stopping these things before they even start. He has precautions on top of precautions, because he HAS to. The swans may be beaten down mentally, but that doesn't mean there isn't always at least a few among them that will jump on any chance they can. I remember writing a practice fic of just day to day life out on that moor at his manor and how he ran things and it was a great exercise in How To Write A Smart Villain because every time I thought of something a swanmane could do I was like "if I could think of that in three minutes, Ruthven already has a plan in place against it" and honestly I think LKH could do with practice like that.
As for why he took them over in the first place, he has a few reasons for that:
1) It enables him to get out of usual political system and answer only to the Council (more on how that works below). He gets total independence from playing the usual vampire games with other Masters and such, and he'll never need leave his moor again, and he likes that.
2) The swanmanes are his personal strike force against anything and anyone that feels like messing with him. His original deal with them was that he'd protect swans (something like Anita happened, basically; swanmanes are vicious enough they wouldn't ordinarily need protection, let alone listen to a vampire offering it) but now he can use them as personal army. That said, he'll still hold to his word and protect his swans against anything that comes against them, like other vampires or therians for instance, if only to protect his property.
3) Remember those tithes? Their money funds his science projects. Ruthven has a keen interest in science, and he's always got some experiment running based on the latest modern discoveries/theories, and it takes money to fund his labs.
Okay, so more about how he only answers to the Council and the ballet training I mentioned. Basically, as long as he has the swanmanes perform ballets for the Council, the Council makes it so no other vampires are allowed to mess with him, contest his territories, complain about how him owning swanmanes that are in their cities constitutes a breach of boundaries, or otherwise get him into all the political power-plays of the vampire world. He doesn't have to fuck with ANY of that just as long as the ballets keep coming, so he makes sure the swanmanes all get the most serious-business ballet training ever to keep it up. Sound ridiculous? Hey, it totally fucking is, even he thinks so, but it has canon basis. That basis is that firstly we know by now that the Anitaverse vampires are absolutely absurd in how they do business (which is part of why he doesn't want to be a part of any of it), and secondly that there has already been a vampire ballet troupe in Danse Macabre, and jean-Claude invited them to St. Louis so that a bunch of other Master vampires could come see it and this would prevent them from in-fighting somehow, and it wasn't made of flunky lame-o vampires, no, it was headed by a very powerful master vampire created by MOAD herself, so clearly BALLET IS SRS BZNS TO VAMPS. Well, vamps other than Ruthven. He has no interest or enjoyment in it himself and does not pretend to understand why the Council likes it, he just makes his swans do it. It's Swan Lake, of course. Over and over and over. The swanmanes are sick of it. The Council is not. They seem to never, ever stop finding it so terribly hilarious and clever and witty and all (again, a reference to how Anitaverse vampires tend to find things clever and witty and such when they really aren't).
So yeah, Ruthven answers only to The Council. He'll listen to Lucretia, who made him, and may do her favors if she asks, but he feels no need to obey her anymore since she's now only his FORMER mentor. Lucretia does not find this disrespectful at all, feeling that he has earned being his own Master. In addition to wanting to keep out of vampire politics and stay nice and isolated from that fuckery on his moor because he finds it RIDICULOUS AS ALL GET-OUT, Ruthven also wants to stay out of said vampire politics because the parts that AREN'T ridiculous, the really nitty-gritty tete-a-tete chess-game manipulations and such...is what he's not good at. He may be good at mind-games and psychological-domination of the swans he already has under his control, but when it comes to the subtlety and intrigue and all that with others powerful vampires, he really doesn't have a leg to stand on, and so he knows he could fall pretty quickly on that battlefield even if he were a more powerful vampire and more intelligent man than his opponent if said opponent were someone as slick as, say, Jean-Claude. Ruthven is really good at knowing his own weaknesses, and accounting for them, so he knows not to dive into fights he can't win, especially when he's doing so well on his own little system.
Now, what he is good at is physical battle. He's got incredible strength, even for a supernatural, and he's a big tall huge muscular dude too, so he's got serious reach and size to help him utilize said strength all the better. Weapons he can use quite well include but are not limited to the broadsword, halberd, battleaxe, bill, pollaxe, musket, cannon, shotgun, flamethrower, and nasty home-brewed biological weapons. This probably seems really, really excessive (it does to me at least) for one person to be good at, especially when they have other skills and areas of interest, but I have to keep reminding myself that vampires have the time to learn all this stuff and get experienced in it so I can give them more skills than I can other characters. Plus, he's meant to be a villain, someone the good guys really have to be challenged by.
Anyway, besides weapons, he can also easily rip someone apart with his bare hands...or his bared teeth, for that matter. Seriously, never, ever let him get his teeth on you. He's like a shark or a pit bull or something, he'll just grab and shake and hang on and tear and rip and shake and FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET BITTY JESUS DO NOT LET THAT MAN EVER GET HIS MOUTH ON YOU EVER! And just in case you think he's all about the physical side only of fighting, nope, he's a brilliant tactician too. All that cold logic, all that frank practicality, all that talent for thinking up just what the enemy will do and how to account for it ahead of time, all of that is probably no more apparent than when he fights. He doesn't need time to plan either, he can think on his feet and in the heat. YEAH, I RHYME, DEAL! I told you, I love me some cheese (which should tell you just how cheesy AB is that even I think it's awful when Anita tries to sound cool and hardass and dangerous).
Not to mention the earthquakes. Ruthven has some very serious Earthmover-line powers going on, big-time. BTW, I encourage any and all dirt/earth/rock/etc-related puns regarding it, because the swanmanes on his manor NEVER STOP WITH THEM. "He's a very grounded guy." "Oh yeah, I agree, totally down-to-earth." "Stone-cold, even." There are also a lot of gags regarding the fact that the word 'earthmover' is a synonym for tractors, bulldozers, anything meant to excavate and transport soil.
Probably his biggest weakness battle-wise is speed. Sure, he's still faster than humans, but to other vampires, he's quite slow, and since it was established in Skin Trade that therians are notably faster than vampires, he's REALLY slow compared to them. Basically, the Mighty Glacier trope, if you're familiar with TvTropes. If you're not, do NOT go there and look it up, YOU WILL BE SUCKED INTO THAT SITE FOR HOURS, IF NOT FOREVER!
His other big weakness...bees. He's allergic to bee stings. Badly. My theory is that vampires and therians keep their allergies despite their ultra-healing, since allergies aren't an injury or illness, they're the immune system being hypersensitive to some specific thing. And since clearly the immune system of therians and vampires is hyped up to the max, making them immune to diseases, it follows that their allergies and allergic reactions would be that much worse too. Ruthven can't die from them anymore, but his throat swells shut, and while he doesn't need to breath that's still very uncomfortable and disorienting. He also gets extremely dizzy and will be in a lot of a pain until he finally 'dies' at dawn. YOU CAN BET HE KEEPS THIS A BIG SECRET FROM THE SWANS.
Personality:
He really doesn't have much of a personality, to be honest. I don't mean that I'm still developing it or haven't figured it out yet, I mean that, aside from his driving interests in success and survival, he really just has all the personality of a rock. Even his interest in science is a means to an end for said success and survival, rather than a genuine passion for study and discovery. Likewise, he breeds his own horses and dogs just for function, not because he has any affection for animals. He's just...a rock. No real opinions or feelings about anything or anyone that doesn't directly pertain to something highly practical and relevant in his life (how to run the swans, battle tactics, etc.), no temper or sense of humor to speak of (I think he does have a cruel sense of irony in there somewhere though), no charm, no sensuality, just stoicly and silently doing his own thing. He's a very, very quiet, serious person. Definitely not a talker, sure as hell not a small-talker. When he does speak it's generally short and straightforward, very economical/few words as possible and as clear as possible, but if it serves his purpose better he can speak like a sphinx and/or at length instead, and it's always very jarring to hear this because he can go YEARS without that much speech at once.
Just because he doesn't talk, of course, doesn't mean he doesn't think. It's very easy, with the way he looks, to take his silence as indication he's just a big dumb brainless brute, but he's actually a ridiculously intelligent man, if you couldn't tell already. And no, you cannot "see the intelligence in his eyes" or anything like that. He genuinely does seem/look/act dull and unresponsive, and it's not a deliberate trick on his part (though he does recognize and appreciate the benefits of being underestimated) it's just how he is.
He knows the swans will kill him one day. And he does all he can to prevent that from being any time soon, but he's still accepting of that inevitability, and he's not upset by it or even scared, because he's had a damn good run and he knows it. I think that he in some way likes knowing where his death will be coming from, kind of like Mommy Fortuna and the Harpy in The Last Unicorn. He plans to go down fighting them like a demon, of course, both because, again, he's a survival-minded sort and I don't think he could ever lie down and die even if he intellectually wanted to, and also because...well...can you imagine what the swanmanes would do to him if they took him alive? He can. He's had a good long time to see what kind of evil vicious shits swans are. Death is definitely preferable to ever being their prisoner.
He's utterly amoral. For instance, you know how most AB vamps, even the most evil, seem repulsed by pedophilia? He's not. He doesn't understand why you would do that or how it would be pleasurable, but he's not morally or even viscerally disgusted. Same for...anything, really. I don't think there's anything he particularly views as evil/gives a shit about being evil. He wouldn't argue it if you said it was, just shrug, because honestly he doesn't care enough about the idea and whether it's true or not. He just does what he does, and all that matters to him is if someone or something is in his way. Beyond that, the dude really couldn't care less about anything no matter how terrible it is. He has no sense of honor, fair play, etc., considering such things to be useless sentimentalities that serve only to hinder and handicap whomever holds them. And, hey, he has a point--if Mr. Oliver hadn't kept his word about not using his earthquake powers in his duel with JC, he might have won! So there's never going to be a moment of "villain spares hero because hero saved his life earlier" or anything like that with him.
If there's one thing I think he can be said to care about in a way not directly related to functionalism, it's his land. He has lived most of his human and vampire life on that moor, and he feels very close to it, very connected to it, in ways that have nothing to do his bloodline's link to the earth. After he was first made a vampire and had to go reside with a Kiss until he was powerful enough to leave, he was separated from Blackstone Moor for a full century, and the first thing he did upon gaining independence was go back to it and make it his again. A lot of his free time is spent just...hanging out there. Just sitting on a rock or standing knee-deep in the pond with the wind blowing in his face for hours, or however much time he can spare that night (hey, he's a busy guy--he's got swans to dominate, science projects to oversee, books to study, weapons to practice with, etc.). I don't know if I'd go so far as to use terms like "he loves it" or even "he feels kinship with it" but he does definitely want to be there.
He also wants to be alone. He has employees out there because he has uses for them, but he doesn't want any personal company, friendships, lovers, etc. He is a very, very solitary fellow who prefers the quiet of his own company. Speaking of lovers though, in addition for being weird for an AB vamp in terms of being sensible and not a serial rapist, he's also weird in that he's got a next to dead sex drive (it's there, but just barely, and he tends to block it anyway because he's got more important things to do) and the closest he ever throws to parties are the ballets for the Council.
Hobbies and interests include science, keeping abreast of modern scientific developments, funding his own labs for scientific gain that can benefit him, animal husbandry (mainly dogs and horses), radios (he still thinks they're pretty neat and useful even after all these years), keeping himself sharp with old weaponry and up to date on new, preserving his moor, swift horseback rides over the hills by night, taking over a swan mentally and thus getting to experience flight through it, and keeping other people (especially other vampires, if they're not in his employ) off said moor. Wow, even the guy with the personality and emotions of a fucking rock has more things he does and is interested in than Anita! Seriously though, what does Anita like besides guns and guys anymore?
Oh yeah, and in regard to the science bit...he would totally love to vivisect Anita and see what makes something like her special necromancer/living vampire/non-shifting panwere self tick. He probably also wouldn't mind cutting up Micah to find out just how someone, especially a ~short and delicate~ someone like him, can get an erection with a monstrously deformed cock like that and not die via all the blood in his body going to his wang. And yes, I entirely want to do a fic where he gets them both in his labs and this happens. I may be a sick fuck but you can't tell me it's not deserved.
History
He was born Lord Richard Thorne during the Tudor Era, specifically the 1500s, in the very manor he resides in now. When he was 18, he was married to a 13 or 14 year old girl, as was typical of the time. It was basically like gaining an annoying little sister, except with none of the familial love. Still, they did their duty and produced three sons and one daughter, all of whom looked like him (yes, including the girl).
Some Tudor nobles saw it as their "job" to be military commanders instead of the typical life of leisure and court politics that most occupied their considerable free time with, and he was one of these. He fought on behalf of Somerset against Scotland and France in the late 1500s pretty much for fun. It is only for battle that he ever left his moor while alive.
He was turned at age 43 by the vampire Lucretia, who had been contracted to make a vampire of her line by a Kiss who felt they were in need of one. I don't know anything about the circumstances of his turning, if it was consensual or not, etc., and I don't feel hard-pressed to work it out because it doesn't affect his role as a villain nor him as a character in general. He was chosen for his intelligence and skill in battle, as well as already having a psychology that would more easily adjust to being a vampire and surviving in their society. Despite the fact that she was an independent, Lucretia stayed with Ruthven in the Kiss even after she'd finished training him fully, and they did not part ways until he had become a Master himself and was powerful enough that he could leave said Kiss with no trouble from its MotC, which took him about 100 years.
You know the hilarious canon fact that vampires fight duels to the death for the right to use the names of famous literary vampires like Dracula? That's how he got his. By accident, no less. The name Ruthven Strongmore, if you didn't know, comes from The Vampyre by Polidori, aka the first vampire novel ever written. The titular character was named Lord Ruthven originally, then changed to Lord Strongmore in later publications. Not long after its publication, bloodsucking wannabe-Byron poofs were fighting for the title. One was unfortunate enough to pick a fight with Richard Thorne, and Thorne wiped the floor with him. Only after beating the poor fop to death did Richard find out that in killing him, he had 'won' his name. Since he could only get rid of the name by losing a duel to the death, he's been forced to keep it, and he doesn't terribly mind to be honest, despite the never-ending line of pretentious little upstart vamps that still come calling to this day to challenge him.
Even though, as mentioned, he had become a powerful enough Master to leave his Kiss after 100 years, it wasn't until...I want to say the mid-1800s (though I may make it earlier) that he took over the swanmanes, since it wasn't until then that he had been powerful enough to dominate all of them in England, and he knew if he didn't have all of them under control all at once, any Flock that he didn't have under his thumb would come to rescue the others.
Two important (story-wise, anyway) things have happened since then: His experiments that produced Delilah, and the swanmane rebellion led by one Gaspard Glass.
Regarding the latter, basically it's exactly what I just said. Gaspard Glass, a swanmane who was a child when Ruthven first took over, grew up to lead a rebellion against him during the Victorian Era. It unfortunately failed, in part due to Gaspard's sister Celia betraying the plans of the rebels to Ruthven, but Gaspard did escape England with a number of swanmanes, and they now reside in America. As for the former...I have yet to decide if this took place before or after the swanmane rebellion, but it did also happen in the Victorian Era. And you know what was big scientific news during the Victorian Era? Charles Darwin and that very controversial theory of his. Inspired by this, Ruthven wanted to find a way to reverse the evolution of vampires and therians into separate species. They started as hybrids (Marmee Noir and her first children), and he wanted to recreate that and make himself one. This resulted in a lot of vampires being kidnapped and/or forcibly turned for the purpose of his test subjects, particularly rotting vampires for their durability.
He had a lot of success with one of these rotters, a woman named Morella, but when he couldn't go any further with her he forced her to turn the next wave of guinea pigs, hoping that her success would be inheritable (belief in the importance of breeding was also big in the Victorian Era, to the point that eugenics were getting fashionable too. One of Morella's 'offspring' was a young girl that she re-named as Delilah. Delilah is a character that I played in Anitaverse roleplays, and in those she was just an ordinary rotter, she wasn't made special or altered by the experiments at all, because that would have been pretty Mary Sue, but when I transplant this all to my original stories, she probably will have been a 'success' to some degree (or at least change in some way) because otherwise there's not much point in focusing on her.
As for how Delilah got loose from the labs, that depends on how the dates line up regarding the swanmane revolution. Ideally, I'd like for her escape to be the result of the swanmane revolution, with the swanmanes dramatically storming the labs and setting the place on fire and Delilah and Gaspard seeing each other in passing so Gaspard can recognize her years later in America and it can be a plot point...but if said dates don't line up, then her escape story is that Morella tried to smuggle Delilah out so that she could meet her later when she escaped herself, but then the box Delilah was stowed in fell off the wagon or she got discovered in-route by whoever was shipping the cargo she was hidden in and she had to run away and got lost, etc., and thus never arrived in the safe spot wherever Morella was trying to send her. And, uh, more about her in her own post, since Ruthven's involvement with her pretty much ends there.
Appearance:
Huge. That is the first thing about him. FUCKING. HUGE. Very, very tall, and all of him is muscle. He's also muscled pretty evenly through-out, neither top-heavy nor the reverse. I have his height written at 6'3 but in my head he TOWERS over everyone, including characters of similar height like Cornelius and Klaus. I, like LKH, don't have the best sense of height and proportion, and his role and personality just make him super-sized in my head I guess.
Dark, heavy features that could fairly be called "craggy" to some degree or another. Grim, firm mouth in a permanent frown. Overhanging brow. Big fangs; I tend to imagine AB vamps with these almost-cute little cat-like fangs (heck, they're barely-there little pin-pricks in the comics!), especially since it's stated only immature vamps can't hide them...but Ruthven in my head has a somewhat bigger set, both wider and longer (yes, yes, there are probably a ton of Freudian jokes to be made there, especially with how sexual biting got in this series) that he can't hide. They're not coming out over his lips or anything, but they're very much there, and the swans also probably have a metric fuckton of overbite jokes to go with 'em. I also see 'em as slightly yellowed too, like those of a wild animal would be.
Black eyes, black hair, widow's peak. The length of his hair varies but generally I picture it in a ponytail that ends about where his shoulder-blades begin. The reason is varies is because any excess energies he absorbs from the swanmanes and the earth just automatically go to making his body grow hair and nails like a living person if he doesn't use said energies in time (this has a canon basis, btw, we see it with JC) and since he's not much fussed about appearances he just lets the hair keep going until it starts to get in his way and then he hacks it all off and it starts again and so on. The nails get cut immediately though because, alas, they are just human nails and not cool claws or anything, and having long nails is definitely something that gets in the way fast.
I also picture him as being somewhat dark-skinned for a white guy from the British Isles population (who genetically tend to be pale sorts), and that sort of breaks AB canon with how even dark people are supposed to get paler as vampires but I don't care.
Not only does he not have many emotions, he has even less tendency to emote. Most of the time the most you'll get out of him is maybe something slight but effective with the eyebrows, or a tugging (downward, of course) of one corner of the mouth. Honestly, if he ever DOES make expressions, that means deep shit is going down and you should probably run. Seriously, he does NOT show reactions, and I find it hilarious. I really want to put him in just loads and loads of highly dangerous, absurd, and/or awkwardly sexual situations and watch him NOT REACT/EMOTE AT ALL because his lack of reaction is somehow the funniest of all reactions to me.
I imagine he moves and has a lot of the same body language as a great big draft horse or bull. Those same slow, heavy, deliberate movements, no lightness in anything he does. Of course, when he actually does start to run or fight, he's definitely not so slow anymore (unless you're another vampire or therian), and then I imagine him more like...you know that scene in Jurassic Park II when InGen arrives and starts chasing the big herbivores around? He'd be the dinosaurs. Or how the T-Rex runs through San Francisco in the same movie. Basically he's big strong animals that move faster than you think, is what I'm saying.
Clothing-wise, I often picture him in brown work boots, blue jeans, and a green pullover like this
http://www.orvis.com/orvis_assets/prodimg/279GPBbtlgrn.jpg
Or one of those big awesome full-length dusters Austrailian Outfitters makes that I saw at the horse tack store, which both look badass and, obviously by where they're sold, are something a guy working on a farm in English weather would be wearing. He dresses very much for function/for his environment. I wouldn't call him a fashion victim per se (since I feel that suggests someone who dresses in an overtly ugly way, not just someone who doesn't bother with looking glamorous or dapper) just that you're more likely to see him around his place in a heavy rain jacket, faded flannel shirt, work pants, and some good sturdy wellies than you are to ever catch him in a good suit (or velvet and PVC like some OTHER vampires I could name who are indeed fashion victims of the highest degree)
Story Function:
Well, obviously he's a villain, and someone that Gaspard (a hero) is inevitably going to have to face again, and who has greatly shaped who Gaspard has become. He's also impacted the swanmanes as a whole, and in roleplay even characters who had never been to England or had anything to do with him personally still very much felt an impact on their lives and outlooks from the knowledge he was to this day ruling their brethren overseas, and that had a lot of effects on how they approached supernatural politics, security, etc., especially in regards to vampires. It made things difficult for them, and that was awesome.
He's obviously a big part of Delilah's past, and her only link to it (since she can't remember it) and if/when this link is found, her history could finally be discovered to the greatest degree it possibly could be without her regaining her memory/sanity. Discovery of this connection to him is also going to make her someone who might well matter to the swans. Either they'll see her as a fellow victim...or as an abomination that was probably only made to hurt them (or at least strengthen vampires as a species, which, hey, same thing!) and needs to be destroyed. And depending in what way she was...altered...she may end up being useful in some way *against* him instead.
Oh, hey, remember Maureen? That fucking fabulous lawyer lady who was talking to Mr. Oliver in Sue versus Sue? She belongs to writtenelision, who is one of the people I played with back in the day, and she adopted Delilah and in one crack-fic we had her find out about Delilah's connection to Ruthven and how, even if he didn't personally turn her himself, he's responsible for her being a vampire, so she blackmailed him into paying child support to her. I still love this with all my heart.
Other Schtuff:
The Master of his first and only kiss was named Geraldine, and I think she was Master of Derbyshire (where The Lair of the White Worm took place). She was a strawberry blonde green-eyed Belle Morte vampire, her animal to call was snakes, and her therian servant was a weresnake named Arabella. I named Geraldine after the vampire-like woman from the poem "Christabel" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and she has hideously deforming scars from fire and holy water on her breast and side as a reference to some unnamed mark or deformity that the poem-Geraldine had in the same area. Arabella is a reference to the villainness Lady Arabella from The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker, who was a woman that could transform into a giant white snake-like creature. Like the Arabella of the book, this Arabella was a black-haired green-eyed woman who wore white clothing and an emerald choker. They're not important really but I want to bring them up to show off HOW MUCH I LOVE MAKING REFERENCES LIKE THAT OKAY a lot of those therians and vamps that work for him are likewise references to English literature. Because I'm a dork. At least it's more subtle than 'Mephistopheles' right?
His horses are strictly for riding; if he has any pulling or plowing or other draft horse type tasks that need doing, he just harnesses himself up to the device instead of the horse. Yes, seriously. Look, he's easily as strong as the horses if not more so, so it just makes more sense to him! His current horse is a big black stallion named Saturn, whom my friends and I ship with the black mare that belongs to another character. We call it OTPony and it is the best ship and we will make them have foalies together someday!
The dogs are an all-purpose pack meant for herding, hunting, and guarding. Guarding-wise, they keep in people who are supposed to be here and keep out those that aren't. As for what they herd and hunt, it's not other animals but swanmanes who get out of line. He's been breeding them himself for decades, crossing them several times with the black fairy dogs that still roam the British Isles in my headcanon, and they have characteristics of both large hounds and mastiffs. Currently, he's got a pack of 13 black ones, and while that cheese wasn't intentional on his part, it totally was on mine. He's trained/socialized these dogs to not be frightened of supernaturals in the slightest (it's been stated in AB that dogs are freaked out by shifters in animal form...though oddly not so much in human form!) and thus they can be quite easily set upon, say, a werewolf that has come on to the grounds uninvited.
Besides the horse, the dogs, and the livestock kept for the therians, there are also a large number of swans (actual animal swans, not swanmanes) on the estate. They are fucking vicious, terrible animals to everyone, including the swanmanes. They'd totally attack Ruthven too if he didn't have the control-swans power going on.
And finally, I like to think there is all kinds of weird shit running around in rural Anitaverse England (because there sure as hell will be in mine) like boggles and dragons and all kinds of things like that and he regularly has to deal with them on the moor and his vampire and therian employees have to help and sometimes the swans do too because those monsters will kill them as much as anyone else and there are just these big awesome battles. And I bet Gaspard took place in said big awesome battles back in the day and one day before he goes down I really want him and Gaspard to have to team up to fight something together and they're all cool back-to-back and shit and are also constantly trying to eliminate each other the entire time.
oh yeah and he and Armel and Cornelius need to be forced to team up and have awesome crazy vamp-bros adventures during which he will THROW A TANK AT A HELICOPTER and wouldn't that just be so fucking cool LIKE BOOM right?
that's all now sorry for the massiveness of this post. Expect more massiveness for upcoming characters.
Anyway. Lord Ruthven Strongmore is an Earthmover-line vampire who can call swans, and as a result rules over all the swanmanes in England. We've seen a lot of MotCs in the series who rule over the therian counterparts of their respective animals to call, but England is a whole damn country, albeit a small one, so he's meant to be a really damn powerful vamp. Of course, said canon MotCs limits to just therians in their cities probably also has a lot to do with the fact that MotCs in other cities won't have them controlling the therians in theirs, so there's that too, but I digress. Point is, Ruthven is a Big Bad tier dude, and he can also call earthquakes like Mr. Oliver. The fact he controls the ground but also summons something that flies is kind of...incongruous, I guess...but last I checked there's no implication in canon that your animal to call has to somehow complement your bloodline. Plus this means I will one day get to use some wonderfully dramatic line about how he can control "Heaven and Earth" or something like that, and I live for that kind of cheese.
He resides in Blackstone Manor, which is built on the fictional Blackstone Moor, his demesne (land owned by a manor lord in the feudal system) when alive. I keep the specific location unknown/ambiguous, but I hint that it's probably somewhere in the Pennines, possibly West Pennine Moors. He's obviously not a Master of any city (though the small towns surrounding the moors are notably lacking any vampire leaders...) and he doesn't have a 'Kiss' per se in the traditional sense (which is good, because I cannot imagine him ever using that word) but he does have a number of vampires and non-swan therians there with him. The therians are paid to be there and work for him at keeping the swans in line during the day and making sure they don't do anything to him while he's asleep, as well as being food for the vamps, while the vampires are blood-bonded to him the way that they would be to a MotC and have various other jobs under him. Some of these jobs are, I'm sure, darkly glamorous tasks as befitting to the children of the night, and some are probably creepy-cool ones related to Ruthven's interest in Weird Science and the barn that's been converted to a laboratory...but some are also more along the lines of taking care of the livestock that he has there for the therians to hunt when full moon comes each month (on-site food provided; for a therian, that's as essential in a job contract as dental plans and workers comp!)
There are always a number of swanmanes on the moor with him too. However, which swanmanes they are changes. The entire swan population of England is never there (or at least, not usually); instead, they're on rotation, a few families with him at a time. There's no reason he *needs* to have them there, but, like everything he does, it serves a purpose, and that purpose is to remind them that he is in control, that he ultimately gets to decide what they do with their lives, that he can make them uproot themselves from their jobs, friends, and community anytime he wants and that if he can do that to them, he can do a whole lot more, so they had better just keep that in mind. See, Ruthven knows he has to keep on top of the whole psychological conditioning deal, just being able to control them with their beasts isn't enough. Swans are vicious fucking angry balls of evil rage by nature, and he doesn't want ANY chance of them ever even THINKING about another rebellion (there's been one already...it didn't work). Also, some swanmanes are there long-term for ballet training in a barn that's been converted to a dance studio. More on that later.
Ruthven runs the swanmanes very efficiently and practically. Cruel, yes, but it's all-business with him, not like how the Anitaverse villains (Chimera, Raina, etc.) always seemed to relish being evil just for kicks (though he doesn't feel the least bit bad about it either). He's a pragmatic person by nature, and that means he doesn't leave himself open to the same risks as other villains either. For instance, if this were the ABverse as written by LKH, his ruling the swans would have involved a lot of rape (always with the rape!) and maybe some pointless torture thrown in just to show what a Complete Monster he is. Except doing that would definitely foster rebellion faster than you could say 'cliche'. Taxing them (yup, they pay tithes to him, just like the werewolves did to Marcus) is comparatively a lot less upsetting to them than that would be, and benefits him far more. Not that there isn't going to be torture if someone gives him a reason, of course, but sadism for its own sake just isn't a wise decision at all from what he's seen of other vampires who tried stuff like this before in various cases. Or, vengeance. Ruthven doesn't do vengeance. He doesn't make things personal. It just causes problems and weaknesses. If he had a chance to, he'd certainly kill Gaspard (the swanmane who led the first rebellion against him) but that's because it's the practically thing to do, since as long as Gaspard is alive Gaspard is probably going to be trying to kill Ruthven too.
Just because he's impersonal, however, doesn't mean he's any less awful, just that he's all the more effective for it. He employs a lot of psychological tactics against the swans under his control to make even them, vicious angry things though swans are, believe that trying revolt again would be futile. He often punishes the group for the sins of the individual, so that no martyrs are made for the others to rally around and because people who would risk themselves aren't likely to risk others too along with them. As a note, Ruthven has made the failure of the rebellion work for him by pointing to as a 'see, this is what happens!' example for any swans who might have similar ideas. Anita's mass rape of ALL THE SWANMANES IN AMERICA is also now something he can point to as 'See, this is why you need ME to protect you!' THANKS, ANITA! He's really, really good at thinking up all the ways the swans could throw another coup, could slip in a holy item, could set a trap, etc., and stopping these things before they even start. He has precautions on top of precautions, because he HAS to. The swans may be beaten down mentally, but that doesn't mean there isn't always at least a few among them that will jump on any chance they can. I remember writing a practice fic of just day to day life out on that moor at his manor and how he ran things and it was a great exercise in How To Write A Smart Villain because every time I thought of something a swanmane could do I was like "if I could think of that in three minutes, Ruthven already has a plan in place against it" and honestly I think LKH could do with practice like that.
As for why he took them over in the first place, he has a few reasons for that:
1) It enables him to get out of usual political system and answer only to the Council (more on how that works below). He gets total independence from playing the usual vampire games with other Masters and such, and he'll never need leave his moor again, and he likes that.
2) The swanmanes are his personal strike force against anything and anyone that feels like messing with him. His original deal with them was that he'd protect swans (something like Anita happened, basically; swanmanes are vicious enough they wouldn't ordinarily need protection, let alone listen to a vampire offering it) but now he can use them as personal army. That said, he'll still hold to his word and protect his swans against anything that comes against them, like other vampires or therians for instance, if only to protect his property.
3) Remember those tithes? Their money funds his science projects. Ruthven has a keen interest in science, and he's always got some experiment running based on the latest modern discoveries/theories, and it takes money to fund his labs.
Okay, so more about how he only answers to the Council and the ballet training I mentioned. Basically, as long as he has the swanmanes perform ballets for the Council, the Council makes it so no other vampires are allowed to mess with him, contest his territories, complain about how him owning swanmanes that are in their cities constitutes a breach of boundaries, or otherwise get him into all the political power-plays of the vampire world. He doesn't have to fuck with ANY of that just as long as the ballets keep coming, so he makes sure the swanmanes all get the most serious-business ballet training ever to keep it up. Sound ridiculous? Hey, it totally fucking is, even he thinks so, but it has canon basis. That basis is that firstly we know by now that the Anitaverse vampires are absolutely absurd in how they do business (which is part of why he doesn't want to be a part of any of it), and secondly that there has already been a vampire ballet troupe in Danse Macabre, and jean-Claude invited them to St. Louis so that a bunch of other Master vampires could come see it and this would prevent them from in-fighting somehow, and it wasn't made of flunky lame-o vampires, no, it was headed by a very powerful master vampire created by MOAD herself, so clearly BALLET IS SRS BZNS TO VAMPS. Well, vamps other than Ruthven. He has no interest or enjoyment in it himself and does not pretend to understand why the Council likes it, he just makes his swans do it. It's Swan Lake, of course. Over and over and over. The swanmanes are sick of it. The Council is not. They seem to never, ever stop finding it so terribly hilarious and clever and witty and all (again, a reference to how Anitaverse vampires tend to find things clever and witty and such when they really aren't).
So yeah, Ruthven answers only to The Council. He'll listen to Lucretia, who made him, and may do her favors if she asks, but he feels no need to obey her anymore since she's now only his FORMER mentor. Lucretia does not find this disrespectful at all, feeling that he has earned being his own Master. In addition to wanting to keep out of vampire politics and stay nice and isolated from that fuckery on his moor because he finds it RIDICULOUS AS ALL GET-OUT, Ruthven also wants to stay out of said vampire politics because the parts that AREN'T ridiculous, the really nitty-gritty tete-a-tete chess-game manipulations and such...is what he's not good at. He may be good at mind-games and psychological-domination of the swans he already has under his control, but when it comes to the subtlety and intrigue and all that with others powerful vampires, he really doesn't have a leg to stand on, and so he knows he could fall pretty quickly on that battlefield even if he were a more powerful vampire and more intelligent man than his opponent if said opponent were someone as slick as, say, Jean-Claude. Ruthven is really good at knowing his own weaknesses, and accounting for them, so he knows not to dive into fights he can't win, especially when he's doing so well on his own little system.
Now, what he is good at is physical battle. He's got incredible strength, even for a supernatural, and he's a big tall huge muscular dude too, so he's got serious reach and size to help him utilize said strength all the better. Weapons he can use quite well include but are not limited to the broadsword, halberd, battleaxe, bill, pollaxe, musket, cannon, shotgun, flamethrower, and nasty home-brewed biological weapons. This probably seems really, really excessive (it does to me at least) for one person to be good at, especially when they have other skills and areas of interest, but I have to keep reminding myself that vampires have the time to learn all this stuff and get experienced in it so I can give them more skills than I can other characters. Plus, he's meant to be a villain, someone the good guys really have to be challenged by.
Anyway, besides weapons, he can also easily rip someone apart with his bare hands...or his bared teeth, for that matter. Seriously, never, ever let him get his teeth on you. He's like a shark or a pit bull or something, he'll just grab and shake and hang on and tear and rip and shake and FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET BITTY JESUS DO NOT LET THAT MAN EVER GET HIS MOUTH ON YOU EVER! And just in case you think he's all about the physical side only of fighting, nope, he's a brilliant tactician too. All that cold logic, all that frank practicality, all that talent for thinking up just what the enemy will do and how to account for it ahead of time, all of that is probably no more apparent than when he fights. He doesn't need time to plan either, he can think on his feet and in the heat. YEAH, I RHYME, DEAL! I told you, I love me some cheese (which should tell you just how cheesy AB is that even I think it's awful when Anita tries to sound cool and hardass and dangerous).
Not to mention the earthquakes. Ruthven has some very serious Earthmover-line powers going on, big-time. BTW, I encourage any and all dirt/earth/rock/etc-related puns regarding it, because the swanmanes on his manor NEVER STOP WITH THEM. "He's a very grounded guy." "Oh yeah, I agree, totally down-to-earth." "Stone-cold, even." There are also a lot of gags regarding the fact that the word 'earthmover' is a synonym for tractors, bulldozers, anything meant to excavate and transport soil.
Probably his biggest weakness battle-wise is speed. Sure, he's still faster than humans, but to other vampires, he's quite slow, and since it was established in Skin Trade that therians are notably faster than vampires, he's REALLY slow compared to them. Basically, the Mighty Glacier trope, if you're familiar with TvTropes. If you're not, do NOT go there and look it up, YOU WILL BE SUCKED INTO THAT SITE FOR HOURS, IF NOT FOREVER!
His other big weakness...bees. He's allergic to bee stings. Badly. My theory is that vampires and therians keep their allergies despite their ultra-healing, since allergies aren't an injury or illness, they're the immune system being hypersensitive to some specific thing. And since clearly the immune system of therians and vampires is hyped up to the max, making them immune to diseases, it follows that their allergies and allergic reactions would be that much worse too. Ruthven can't die from them anymore, but his throat swells shut, and while he doesn't need to breath that's still very uncomfortable and disorienting. He also gets extremely dizzy and will be in a lot of a pain until he finally 'dies' at dawn. YOU CAN BET HE KEEPS THIS A BIG SECRET FROM THE SWANS.
Personality:
He really doesn't have much of a personality, to be honest. I don't mean that I'm still developing it or haven't figured it out yet, I mean that, aside from his driving interests in success and survival, he really just has all the personality of a rock. Even his interest in science is a means to an end for said success and survival, rather than a genuine passion for study and discovery. Likewise, he breeds his own horses and dogs just for function, not because he has any affection for animals. He's just...a rock. No real opinions or feelings about anything or anyone that doesn't directly pertain to something highly practical and relevant in his life (how to run the swans, battle tactics, etc.), no temper or sense of humor to speak of (I think he does have a cruel sense of irony in there somewhere though), no charm, no sensuality, just stoicly and silently doing his own thing. He's a very, very quiet, serious person. Definitely not a talker, sure as hell not a small-talker. When he does speak it's generally short and straightforward, very economical/few words as possible and as clear as possible, but if it serves his purpose better he can speak like a sphinx and/or at length instead, and it's always very jarring to hear this because he can go YEARS without that much speech at once.
Just because he doesn't talk, of course, doesn't mean he doesn't think. It's very easy, with the way he looks, to take his silence as indication he's just a big dumb brainless brute, but he's actually a ridiculously intelligent man, if you couldn't tell already. And no, you cannot "see the intelligence in his eyes" or anything like that. He genuinely does seem/look/act dull and unresponsive, and it's not a deliberate trick on his part (though he does recognize and appreciate the benefits of being underestimated) it's just how he is.
He knows the swans will kill him one day. And he does all he can to prevent that from being any time soon, but he's still accepting of that inevitability, and he's not upset by it or even scared, because he's had a damn good run and he knows it. I think that he in some way likes knowing where his death will be coming from, kind of like Mommy Fortuna and the Harpy in The Last Unicorn. He plans to go down fighting them like a demon, of course, both because, again, he's a survival-minded sort and I don't think he could ever lie down and die even if he intellectually wanted to, and also because...well...can you imagine what the swanmanes would do to him if they took him alive? He can. He's had a good long time to see what kind of evil vicious shits swans are. Death is definitely preferable to ever being their prisoner.
He's utterly amoral. For instance, you know how most AB vamps, even the most evil, seem repulsed by pedophilia? He's not. He doesn't understand why you would do that or how it would be pleasurable, but he's not morally or even viscerally disgusted. Same for...anything, really. I don't think there's anything he particularly views as evil/gives a shit about being evil. He wouldn't argue it if you said it was, just shrug, because honestly he doesn't care enough about the idea and whether it's true or not. He just does what he does, and all that matters to him is if someone or something is in his way. Beyond that, the dude really couldn't care less about anything no matter how terrible it is. He has no sense of honor, fair play, etc., considering such things to be useless sentimentalities that serve only to hinder and handicap whomever holds them. And, hey, he has a point--if Mr. Oliver hadn't kept his word about not using his earthquake powers in his duel with JC, he might have won! So there's never going to be a moment of "villain spares hero because hero saved his life earlier" or anything like that with him.
If there's one thing I think he can be said to care about in a way not directly related to functionalism, it's his land. He has lived most of his human and vampire life on that moor, and he feels very close to it, very connected to it, in ways that have nothing to do his bloodline's link to the earth. After he was first made a vampire and had to go reside with a Kiss until he was powerful enough to leave, he was separated from Blackstone Moor for a full century, and the first thing he did upon gaining independence was go back to it and make it his again. A lot of his free time is spent just...hanging out there. Just sitting on a rock or standing knee-deep in the pond with the wind blowing in his face for hours, or however much time he can spare that night (hey, he's a busy guy--he's got swans to dominate, science projects to oversee, books to study, weapons to practice with, etc.). I don't know if I'd go so far as to use terms like "he loves it" or even "he feels kinship with it" but he does definitely want to be there.
He also wants to be alone. He has employees out there because he has uses for them, but he doesn't want any personal company, friendships, lovers, etc. He is a very, very solitary fellow who prefers the quiet of his own company. Speaking of lovers though, in addition for being weird for an AB vamp in terms of being sensible and not a serial rapist, he's also weird in that he's got a next to dead sex drive (it's there, but just barely, and he tends to block it anyway because he's got more important things to do) and the closest he ever throws to parties are the ballets for the Council.
Hobbies and interests include science, keeping abreast of modern scientific developments, funding his own labs for scientific gain that can benefit him, animal husbandry (mainly dogs and horses), radios (he still thinks they're pretty neat and useful even after all these years), keeping himself sharp with old weaponry and up to date on new, preserving his moor, swift horseback rides over the hills by night, taking over a swan mentally and thus getting to experience flight through it, and keeping other people (especially other vampires, if they're not in his employ) off said moor. Wow, even the guy with the personality and emotions of a fucking rock has more things he does and is interested in than Anita! Seriously though, what does Anita like besides guns and guys anymore?
Oh yeah, and in regard to the science bit...he would totally love to vivisect Anita and see what makes something like her special necromancer/living vampire/non-shifting panwere self tick. He probably also wouldn't mind cutting up Micah to find out just how someone, especially a ~short and delicate~ someone like him, can get an erection with a monstrously deformed cock like that and not die via all the blood in his body going to his wang. And yes, I entirely want to do a fic where he gets them both in his labs and this happens. I may be a sick fuck but you can't tell me it's not deserved.
History
He was born Lord Richard Thorne during the Tudor Era, specifically the 1500s, in the very manor he resides in now. When he was 18, he was married to a 13 or 14 year old girl, as was typical of the time. It was basically like gaining an annoying little sister, except with none of the familial love. Still, they did their duty and produced three sons and one daughter, all of whom looked like him (yes, including the girl).
Some Tudor nobles saw it as their "job" to be military commanders instead of the typical life of leisure and court politics that most occupied their considerable free time with, and he was one of these. He fought on behalf of Somerset against Scotland and France in the late 1500s pretty much for fun. It is only for battle that he ever left his moor while alive.
He was turned at age 43 by the vampire Lucretia, who had been contracted to make a vampire of her line by a Kiss who felt they were in need of one. I don't know anything about the circumstances of his turning, if it was consensual or not, etc., and I don't feel hard-pressed to work it out because it doesn't affect his role as a villain nor him as a character in general. He was chosen for his intelligence and skill in battle, as well as already having a psychology that would more easily adjust to being a vampire and surviving in their society. Despite the fact that she was an independent, Lucretia stayed with Ruthven in the Kiss even after she'd finished training him fully, and they did not part ways until he had become a Master himself and was powerful enough that he could leave said Kiss with no trouble from its MotC, which took him about 100 years.
You know the hilarious canon fact that vampires fight duels to the death for the right to use the names of famous literary vampires like Dracula? That's how he got his. By accident, no less. The name Ruthven Strongmore, if you didn't know, comes from The Vampyre by Polidori, aka the first vampire novel ever written. The titular character was named Lord Ruthven originally, then changed to Lord Strongmore in later publications. Not long after its publication, bloodsucking wannabe-Byron poofs were fighting for the title. One was unfortunate enough to pick a fight with Richard Thorne, and Thorne wiped the floor with him. Only after beating the poor fop to death did Richard find out that in killing him, he had 'won' his name. Since he could only get rid of the name by losing a duel to the death, he's been forced to keep it, and he doesn't terribly mind to be honest, despite the never-ending line of pretentious little upstart vamps that still come calling to this day to challenge him.
Even though, as mentioned, he had become a powerful enough Master to leave his Kiss after 100 years, it wasn't until...I want to say the mid-1800s (though I may make it earlier) that he took over the swanmanes, since it wasn't until then that he had been powerful enough to dominate all of them in England, and he knew if he didn't have all of them under control all at once, any Flock that he didn't have under his thumb would come to rescue the others.
Two important (story-wise, anyway) things have happened since then: His experiments that produced Delilah, and the swanmane rebellion led by one Gaspard Glass.
Regarding the latter, basically it's exactly what I just said. Gaspard Glass, a swanmane who was a child when Ruthven first took over, grew up to lead a rebellion against him during the Victorian Era. It unfortunately failed, in part due to Gaspard's sister Celia betraying the plans of the rebels to Ruthven, but Gaspard did escape England with a number of swanmanes, and they now reside in America. As for the former...I have yet to decide if this took place before or after the swanmane rebellion, but it did also happen in the Victorian Era. And you know what was big scientific news during the Victorian Era? Charles Darwin and that very controversial theory of his. Inspired by this, Ruthven wanted to find a way to reverse the evolution of vampires and therians into separate species. They started as hybrids (Marmee Noir and her first children), and he wanted to recreate that and make himself one. This resulted in a lot of vampires being kidnapped and/or forcibly turned for the purpose of his test subjects, particularly rotting vampires for their durability.
He had a lot of success with one of these rotters, a woman named Morella, but when he couldn't go any further with her he forced her to turn the next wave of guinea pigs, hoping that her success would be inheritable (belief in the importance of breeding was also big in the Victorian Era, to the point that eugenics were getting fashionable too. One of Morella's 'offspring' was a young girl that she re-named as Delilah. Delilah is a character that I played in Anitaverse roleplays, and in those she was just an ordinary rotter, she wasn't made special or altered by the experiments at all, because that would have been pretty Mary Sue, but when I transplant this all to my original stories, she probably will have been a 'success' to some degree (or at least change in some way) because otherwise there's not much point in focusing on her.
As for how Delilah got loose from the labs, that depends on how the dates line up regarding the swanmane revolution. Ideally, I'd like for her escape to be the result of the swanmane revolution, with the swanmanes dramatically storming the labs and setting the place on fire and Delilah and Gaspard seeing each other in passing so Gaspard can recognize her years later in America and it can be a plot point...but if said dates don't line up, then her escape story is that Morella tried to smuggle Delilah out so that she could meet her later when she escaped herself, but then the box Delilah was stowed in fell off the wagon or she got discovered in-route by whoever was shipping the cargo she was hidden in and she had to run away and got lost, etc., and thus never arrived in the safe spot wherever Morella was trying to send her. And, uh, more about her in her own post, since Ruthven's involvement with her pretty much ends there.
Appearance:
Huge. That is the first thing about him. FUCKING. HUGE. Very, very tall, and all of him is muscle. He's also muscled pretty evenly through-out, neither top-heavy nor the reverse. I have his height written at 6'3 but in my head he TOWERS over everyone, including characters of similar height like Cornelius and Klaus. I, like LKH, don't have the best sense of height and proportion, and his role and personality just make him super-sized in my head I guess.
Dark, heavy features that could fairly be called "craggy" to some degree or another. Grim, firm mouth in a permanent frown. Overhanging brow. Big fangs; I tend to imagine AB vamps with these almost-cute little cat-like fangs (heck, they're barely-there little pin-pricks in the comics!), especially since it's stated only immature vamps can't hide them...but Ruthven in my head has a somewhat bigger set, both wider and longer (yes, yes, there are probably a ton of Freudian jokes to be made there, especially with how sexual biting got in this series) that he can't hide. They're not coming out over his lips or anything, but they're very much there, and the swans also probably have a metric fuckton of overbite jokes to go with 'em. I also see 'em as slightly yellowed too, like those of a wild animal would be.
Black eyes, black hair, widow's peak. The length of his hair varies but generally I picture it in a ponytail that ends about where his shoulder-blades begin. The reason is varies is because any excess energies he absorbs from the swanmanes and the earth just automatically go to making his body grow hair and nails like a living person if he doesn't use said energies in time (this has a canon basis, btw, we see it with JC) and since he's not much fussed about appearances he just lets the hair keep going until it starts to get in his way and then he hacks it all off and it starts again and so on. The nails get cut immediately though because, alas, they are just human nails and not cool claws or anything, and having long nails is definitely something that gets in the way fast.
I also picture him as being somewhat dark-skinned for a white guy from the British Isles population (who genetically tend to be pale sorts), and that sort of breaks AB canon with how even dark people are supposed to get paler as vampires but I don't care.
Not only does he not have many emotions, he has even less tendency to emote. Most of the time the most you'll get out of him is maybe something slight but effective with the eyebrows, or a tugging (downward, of course) of one corner of the mouth. Honestly, if he ever DOES make expressions, that means deep shit is going down and you should probably run. Seriously, he does NOT show reactions, and I find it hilarious. I really want to put him in just loads and loads of highly dangerous, absurd, and/or awkwardly sexual situations and watch him NOT REACT/EMOTE AT ALL because his lack of reaction is somehow the funniest of all reactions to me.
I imagine he moves and has a lot of the same body language as a great big draft horse or bull. Those same slow, heavy, deliberate movements, no lightness in anything he does. Of course, when he actually does start to run or fight, he's definitely not so slow anymore (unless you're another vampire or therian), and then I imagine him more like...you know that scene in Jurassic Park II when InGen arrives and starts chasing the big herbivores around? He'd be the dinosaurs. Or how the T-Rex runs through San Francisco in the same movie. Basically he's big strong animals that move faster than you think, is what I'm saying.
Clothing-wise, I often picture him in brown work boots, blue jeans, and a green pullover like this
http://www.orvis.com/orvis_assets/prodimg/279GPBbtlgrn.jpg
Or one of those big awesome full-length dusters Austrailian Outfitters makes that I saw at the horse tack store, which both look badass and, obviously by where they're sold, are something a guy working on a farm in English weather would be wearing. He dresses very much for function/for his environment. I wouldn't call him a fashion victim per se (since I feel that suggests someone who dresses in an overtly ugly way, not just someone who doesn't bother with looking glamorous or dapper) just that you're more likely to see him around his place in a heavy rain jacket, faded flannel shirt, work pants, and some good sturdy wellies than you are to ever catch him in a good suit (or velvet and PVC like some OTHER vampires I could name who are indeed fashion victims of the highest degree)
Story Function:
Well, obviously he's a villain, and someone that Gaspard (a hero) is inevitably going to have to face again, and who has greatly shaped who Gaspard has become. He's also impacted the swanmanes as a whole, and in roleplay even characters who had never been to England or had anything to do with him personally still very much felt an impact on their lives and outlooks from the knowledge he was to this day ruling their brethren overseas, and that had a lot of effects on how they approached supernatural politics, security, etc., especially in regards to vampires. It made things difficult for them, and that was awesome.
He's obviously a big part of Delilah's past, and her only link to it (since she can't remember it) and if/when this link is found, her history could finally be discovered to the greatest degree it possibly could be without her regaining her memory/sanity. Discovery of this connection to him is also going to make her someone who might well matter to the swans. Either they'll see her as a fellow victim...or as an abomination that was probably only made to hurt them (or at least strengthen vampires as a species, which, hey, same thing!) and needs to be destroyed. And depending in what way she was...altered...she may end up being useful in some way *against* him instead.
Oh, hey, remember Maureen? That fucking fabulous lawyer lady who was talking to Mr. Oliver in Sue versus Sue? She belongs to writtenelision, who is one of the people I played with back in the day, and she adopted Delilah and in one crack-fic we had her find out about Delilah's connection to Ruthven and how, even if he didn't personally turn her himself, he's responsible for her being a vampire, so she blackmailed him into paying child support to her. I still love this with all my heart.
Other Schtuff:
The Master of his first and only kiss was named Geraldine, and I think she was Master of Derbyshire (where The Lair of the White Worm took place). She was a strawberry blonde green-eyed Belle Morte vampire, her animal to call was snakes, and her therian servant was a weresnake named Arabella. I named Geraldine after the vampire-like woman from the poem "Christabel" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and she has hideously deforming scars from fire and holy water on her breast and side as a reference to some unnamed mark or deformity that the poem-Geraldine had in the same area. Arabella is a reference to the villainness Lady Arabella from The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker, who was a woman that could transform into a giant white snake-like creature. Like the Arabella of the book, this Arabella was a black-haired green-eyed woman who wore white clothing and an emerald choker. They're not important really but I want to bring them up to show off HOW MUCH I LOVE MAKING REFERENCES LIKE THAT OKAY a lot of those therians and vamps that work for him are likewise references to English literature. Because I'm a dork. At least it's more subtle than 'Mephistopheles' right?
His horses are strictly for riding; if he has any pulling or plowing or other draft horse type tasks that need doing, he just harnesses himself up to the device instead of the horse. Yes, seriously. Look, he's easily as strong as the horses if not more so, so it just makes more sense to him! His current horse is a big black stallion named Saturn, whom my friends and I ship with the black mare that belongs to another character. We call it OTPony and it is the best ship and we will make them have foalies together someday!
The dogs are an all-purpose pack meant for herding, hunting, and guarding. Guarding-wise, they keep in people who are supposed to be here and keep out those that aren't. As for what they herd and hunt, it's not other animals but swanmanes who get out of line. He's been breeding them himself for decades, crossing them several times with the black fairy dogs that still roam the British Isles in my headcanon, and they have characteristics of both large hounds and mastiffs. Currently, he's got a pack of 13 black ones, and while that cheese wasn't intentional on his part, it totally was on mine. He's trained/socialized these dogs to not be frightened of supernaturals in the slightest (it's been stated in AB that dogs are freaked out by shifters in animal form...though oddly not so much in human form!) and thus they can be quite easily set upon, say, a werewolf that has come on to the grounds uninvited.
Besides the horse, the dogs, and the livestock kept for the therians, there are also a large number of swans (actual animal swans, not swanmanes) on the estate. They are fucking vicious, terrible animals to everyone, including the swanmanes. They'd totally attack Ruthven too if he didn't have the control-swans power going on.
And finally, I like to think there is all kinds of weird shit running around in rural Anitaverse England (because there sure as hell will be in mine) like boggles and dragons and all kinds of things like that and he regularly has to deal with them on the moor and his vampire and therian employees have to help and sometimes the swans do too because those monsters will kill them as much as anyone else and there are just these big awesome battles. And I bet Gaspard took place in said big awesome battles back in the day and one day before he goes down I really want him and Gaspard to have to team up to fight something together and they're all cool back-to-back and shit and are also constantly trying to eliminate each other the entire time.
oh yeah and he and Armel and Cornelius need to be forced to team up and have awesome crazy vamp-bros adventures during which he will THROW A TANK AT A HELICOPTER and wouldn't that just be so fucking cool LIKE BOOM right?
that's all now sorry for the massiveness of this post. Expect more massiveness for upcoming characters.
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Date: 2013-07-13 09:49 pm (UTC)Cassie is one of his scientists. She's very shy and self-contained, and she nurses a huge crush on him. She sees him after he's been stung by a bee, recognises the symptoms, and starts doing her own private research to help him (since epi-pens aren't an option due to lack of bloodflow). She comes up with something and shyly presents it to him to show that he cares.
And he tortures her to find out how she knew his weakness, and kills her once he has. She might have been able to find something useful, but the chances were too low to be worth risking a swanmane wondering why she was researching allergy treatments.
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Date: 2013-07-13 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-13 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-13 10:28 pm (UTC)But, no, seriously, that's awesome, thank you!
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Date: 2013-07-14 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-13 11:48 pm (UTC)For a moment I thought you were going to make his dogs weredogs. And I was going to sporfle for a while. But that's alright, I like your idea better.
Arabella sounds so goddamn pretty @_@
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Date: 2013-07-14 12:41 am (UTC)Book!Arabella was, if I recall right, though slightly an 'older woman' by the standards of the day, so most likely the character here is too since she's supposed to look just like her =D
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Date: 2013-07-14 11:11 am (UTC)I can imagine Ruthven making a stolid face as the master vampires enthuse over the dancing.
That is 100% exactly spot-on! He does not get this shit.
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Date: 2013-07-14 10:51 am (UTC)I really wish therianthropy was better explained in the ABverse because there's just so much cool stuff you could do, depending on exactly how it all functions.
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Date: 2013-07-14 11:11 am (UTC)And, ugh, agreed!
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Date: 2013-07-14 05:07 pm (UTC)The therianthropes, however, in AB canon...it being a disease with a known vaccine means there should probably be a lot more about it, especially from Ms "I Know Everything!" Blake. And you could do all sorts with it! Like, if it's a disease that infects the host, considering what it does, it must infect every cell of the host's body and alter their genes are expressed. An infection mechanism that can do that, if properly studied and understood, could help treat or even cure all kinds of genetic diseases.
Given how badly the shifter communities are treated in the AB world, I'm really surprised there doesn't seem to be any sign of them being disappeared away for the purpose of research into things like this. Or studying them to see exactly what makes their healing factor so good to see if it can be applied to regular humans, or drug experiments to see if there's anything that can inhibit certain aspects of their metabolism long enough for other drugs to kick in and actually do something. I'd much rather read a plot like that than a world saving cocktail party where the hosts keep assaulting everyone.
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Date: 2013-07-14 05:34 pm (UTC)