Difference between revisions of "Ken"

Revision as of 20:39, 10 November 2011

Ken is a vampire.

Description

• Ken
• male
• dark brown buzzcut hair
• blue eyes
• 5' 10"
• 165 lbs
• age early/mid 20s when embraced
• born in 1940
• 8th Generation
• Survivor (Caregiver)
• XP Spent: 0
  • 3 XP for Willpower 4th dot
  • 4 XP for Willpower 5th dot
  • 3 XP for first dot in Occult

Attributes

Abilities

Advantages

More Stuff

Merits and Flaws

• (-3) Driving Goal
  • Enable a lasting truce/cease fire between Kindred and Garou
• (-1) Prey Exclusion
  • Women
• (-1) Nightmares
  • War flashbacks
• (-1) Overconfident
• (-1) Skeleton in the Closet
  • Garou daughter
• (-2) Open Wound
  • Gunshot suffered just before his embrace
• (+2) Baby Face / Sanguine Humour

Backstory

• Grew up in semi-rural Pennsylvania
• Middle of his class in HS
• Got in to a ROTC program (maybe Penn State?)
• Met a girl training to be a nurse in college, fell in love
• Finished college, commissioned into the Army
• Stayed with his girlfriend
• Became part of a special ops team
• Sent to Vietnam during the big ramp-up of US involvement, maybe like 1961 or 1962
• Proposed to his lady the night before he left
• She accepted
• He left for the Vietnam war
• Lots of successful operations
• Then, one operation went wrong...
• Whole team was killed, he was shot and bleeding to death
• Just as the world started to fade, a young woman appeared and bit him
• He woke up later, and she was still there. And he was a vampire...
• To this day, he still has that bullet wound
• The Army declared him MIA
• His sire, the young woman, stayed with him and traveled with him for a long time
• Linh Tuyen Chu - a beautiful vietnamese woman barely 18 years of age when she was embraced
• She had been a priestess in medieval europe, learned of taoism and buddhism in china, traveled through africa and south america, basically has been everywhere
• She taught him great control over himself and the beast now within him
• Her teachings meshed well with the self-discipline he had learned in the armed forces
• After traveling for about a decade, they came back to his hometown
• His girlfriend was still there -- with her 9-year-old daughter
• She was still wearing the ring he gave her on a gold chain around her neck
• Their daughter was a beautiful young girl
• He stayed a near them for a few years, working to come to terms with himself and his feelings
• During this time, their daughter started to have some odd problems as she grew up
• One night, he heard howling echoing through the woods
• He knew there was no pack in his woods
• He followed the sound, and found a clearing with a young wolf
• Her eyes closed and as she fell asleep, her form flowed back to that of his daughter
• He held her into the night, and a few hours before dawn, she awoke
• She recognized him from her mother's pictures
• He told her everything would be okay, and that he would be out in this clearing again the next night
• Any night he heard her howling, he would find her
• He helped her through the Change, and to cope with her new self
• She discovered that her great-grandfather knew of an ancestor who suffered the same "affliction"
• After a while, her mom found out
• She brought her mother one night to see Ken
• Ken hoped to set her (the mom) free from him finally. Asked her to go ahead and live her life, as he could no longer join her
• Promised to keep an eye on (their daughter) for as long as he could
• Traveled on and off, but came back every few weeks to spend at least a month in his woods, watching out for them
• Early in this time, he scouted a couple of the closest werewolf packs he could find
• He told (the daughter) about them so she could choose one to go to for better guidance
• He cut back on his visits after she graduated from college
• Still, he continues to visit her every now and then, even though she is quite grown up
• He can occasionally slink through her territory in wolf form to visit her

Stories

Cobblestone alleyway -- I took a fast turn and ducked down a little, past the trash bin and into the alley. Good, there's a no light. Don't look behind you, just go. Listen. You can hear them anyway. Drop the coat.

One foot landed on a patch of black ice. Damn. Get up!

Left at the end. Two blocks up, next alley. The sky is turning red already. I can feel it -- I've got maybe 5 minutes, tops. Even more motivation to get far enough ahead of these guys. I put on some more speed just as I heard the first two coming around the corner behind me. You are toast tomorrow.

Out onto main, up the street, the sun starting to peek over the horizon. Started to smoke a little as I jumped over the fence and into the snow. Need to get out of sight. Between a few trees, and right onto more ice. I could feel the crunch in my ankle as I was still falling, sliding, under the row of hedges. Finally on dirt. As I fade into the ground, all I can think is how angry Linh will be. She won't show it. But she'll be angry.

* * *

The world is slow to come back. It doesn't come into focus, really, when you're still melded with it. But you gradually become aware that you're there, when moments ago you weren't aware of it. No way to check if anyone else is around, so I meld back out of the soil and lie for a moment, still mostly under shrubs. Take a few minutes and fix the ankle before you get up. It'll go better.

I haul myself up and head back towards the safe house. Better take a different route, and make sure I'm not still being followed. I can see all the trampled places where they looked for me. But it seems like they gave up.

You run into funny things, walking around at night. It's early evening still, and there's a lone pretty lady walking through the park. Bad idea, hon. Sure enough, here comes a brute grabbing her from behind. I have a surprise for him. I come around quietly up behind him and take a swing. Double punch to the kidneys causes problems for most mortals.

I motion to the lady, and tell her to run. She takes off. The guy is getting back up -- he's at least half a head taller and has about 40 pounds on me. Fight smart, Ken. A few dodges invite him off his balance trying to chase me down, and a quick strike knocks the wind out of him. Line up a kick and..K.O. I drag him off the path and have breakfast. He'll survive. I wonder how long he'll swear off stalking people in the park?

Finally get to the safe house. Linh is waiting for me at the door with that look on her face. I pull out the sheet of paper with all my notes on these three -- names, addresses, families, jobs, histories. The lady one of them is having an affair with. Everything. "You said to get the info. I got the info." I walk past her into the house, towards the stairs, and pause. "Four feet sure would've helped though." I pull off my blood-soaked shirt and head downstairs. I can hear Linh behind me.

"Your back is burned, Ken. We need to work on that."

"One thing at a time, please." I open up my bag, pull out some gauze and re-wrap my shoulder. She just watches. She knows I learn what I learn, not what she teaches me. And I think it still bring up memories for her every time she sees my shoulder. She hasn't told me yet why it hurt her so much to see me dying. I'm learning to come to terms with the fact that she'll tell me when she's ready. Or something.

"So are we taking these guys out, or leaving quickly?" She's reading the page again, slowly shaking her head. "No, the job was to get the info. If we need to hustle, we'll head east." She looks up. "I have a friend in Saskatoon. From there maybe we can hit Winnipeg and then slip into the States somewhere in Minnesota."

I still don't know how I feel about going home. But it's where I need to go. I'm feeling thankful that it has been, and continues to be, a long journey.