OOC: Information
Character you're applying for: Daemon Sadi. His full name is Saetan Daemon SaDiablo, but he cannot claim it, as his father (also named Saetan Daemon SaDiablo) was never able to legally lay paternal claim to him. Therefore, he is a bastard. Which is also his usually-affection nickname from his half-brother Lucivar, 'Bastard'.
Series the character is from: The Black Jewels Trilogy, by Anne Bishop (along with a few spin-off novels/short stories he appears in, in the same universe)
Character's age: a little over 1700. He’d just turned 1700 when the series started and Jaenelle was 7; when it ends, Jaenelle is in her twenties, but I don’t think Daemon bothers with exact ages anymore, he says that got old after the first few hundred years or so. He appears to be in his early thirties/late twenties or thereabouts. I've made him 1723 in game.
Character's gender: male. Very, very male.
Character’s “Real Name”: Andrew Tannin
Please give us a detailed personal history of your character:
The world Daemon comes from is divided into three Realms: Terreille, Kaeleer, and Hell. Think of these Realms as alternate worlds/dimensions, though there are gates that can be manipulated by magic-users to travel between them. Within each Realm, the land is divided into territories, ruled by Queens. Each territory has its own race of people (and occasionally Kindred) and contains provinces, towns, etc.
Terreille is known as the Realm of Light and is closest in description to earth, although advanced to somewhere around Victorian England. It is here that the corruption seen throughout the books is the strongest, and spreading, as nearly all of Terreille’s territories have come under the control of - not a Queen, but a High Priestess - Dorothea SaDiablo, who has also destroyed most of the other powerful Queens and replaced them with weaker puppet-Queens to keep all the rule for herself.
Kaeleer is known as the Shadow Realm and for centuries it has remained free of Terreille and Dorothea’s taint, but it is slowly starting to crumble one territory at a time. Kaeleer is very similar to Terreille in many ways, but it is closer to the Dark Realm, and therefore considered ‘wilder’ and many territories are left unclaimed by the more humanoid races of the realm, ruled by the Kindred, or sentient animals/mythical creatures. (Some seen include unicorns, spiders, wolves, tigers, etc). Within Kaeleer, most of the Blood still follow the old laws that have always ruled them, old rules that those in Terreille have forgotten or that Dorothea has perverted and corrupted.
Hell is, of course, the Dark Realm, the realm of the dead (and demon dead - the dead that still walk) and is inhabited by demons and the Blood that have passed on, but not. It is ruled by Daemon’s father, Saetan SaDiablo, the High Lord of Hell and the only other Black Jeweled male in existence.
As for the races of people themselves, there are some races that live exceptionally long lives, which is how Daemon can be 1700 years old when most races have a normal human lifespan of maybe 100. His half-brother Lucivar is also one of the long-living races and is nearly as old as Daemon himself. In all of the races there is what is known as Blood (those that can use magic, possess the jewels that tell of their power level, and are the appointed aristocracy and keepers of the Realms) and non-Blood (known as landens, these are normal non-magic peoples who serve the Blood) and Kindred (Blood Animals with sentient lives and can possess the same magics as the humanoid races, though after being hunted and persecuted for centuries, most Kindred avoid the Blood entirely)
The Blood in each Realm are divided in an intricate pattern descending from sex (Queens always rule, males always serve - it’s in their innate nature), social class, and caste. Each male or female is born into their caste, destined from birth to reach a certain rank.
Among the males, they include: Blood male (an unjeweled male with little ability to use magic), Warlord (a basic jeweled male with some magical ability), Prince (a jeweled male with greater magical ability, is more aggressive and territorial than warlords, and on equal level as a Priestess or Healer) and Warlord Prince (the highest caste in the male ranking and therefore very rare. They are above a Black Widow, but below a Queen, as they serve the most powerful Queen in their territory. The most territorial and sexual males of the Blood, they are extremely aggressive and dangerous and usually require that bond with a strong Queen because of this.)
Among the females ranks are: Blood female, Witch (equal to a Warlord), Healer/Priestess, Black Widow (a step above Healers and Priestesses, these females have the ability to ‘weave tangled webs’ to see dreams and visions and are also experts at healing the mind an casting illusions. Black Widows are considered to be the most dangerous and sexual of the Blood female caste and answer only to their Queen and her Warlord Prince, as well as other Black Widows who are stronger/darker jeweled. Their ability as a Black Widow does not reveal itself until puberty and grants them immunity to poisons and venoms, as well as grants them their own poison, hidden in a tiny snake tooth beneath the right ring finger. Black Widows were always born female, no male Black Widow had ever been known to exist until Saetan SaDiablo (the High Lord of Hell) magically became one, studying the craft and finding a way to grant himself this ability. His son, Daemon, is the only Black Widow male ever naturally born that way, and he lets few people know what he is for that very reason), and Queen (the most powerful Blood female in each territory/realm. She is considered to be the land’s heart and the Blood’s moral center; she is the focal point of their society. Queens tend to the land, being the only ones who have the Craft to heal the land after it has been damaged or tainted. They have the strongest ties to the Land/Earth and the Blood itself.)
There is a strict set of rules that the untainted Blood live by, their Protocol, as they call it. A Queen heads a Court and males always seek a powerful Queen to serve. In Protocol a triangle has four sides. The Steward (Saetan), the Consort (Daemon), and the Escort (or guardian) (Lucivar/Andulvar), with the Queen (Jaenelle) at its center. Then the Court is filled with an even, balanced amount of lesser Queens, Priestesses, Healers, and Witches alongside Warlords, Princes, and Warlord Princes known as the Coven or the Court. There is a strict set of rules they all abide by, referred to by many different names, the Law of the Blood, Protocol, the Dance, the Game.
The dividing line between females and males is very distinct, however, with the males being very respectful (if not typically affectionately exasperated) and the females never quite understanding why males are as aggravating as they are, but putting up with the overprotective fussing all the same.
The series distinctly shows the difference in the emotions that rule them. The males are a volatile and often violent race. They are all territorial and protective, especially of their Queen and the other females in their courts. They are especially volatile around other males, challenges frequently rising and clashing between them on the psychic threads that connect all the Blood. Males are known to rise to what’s known as the Killing Edge, when their actions and emotions spiral darkly and are controlled by anger and territorial/possessive rage. It usually requires their Queen (or a huge amount of self-control) to snap them back out of it, which is why all males seek out a powerful Queen to serve.
The females aren’t as strongly controlled by their emotions, but they are also very protective of their males, and should their Court come into danger, Queens will also spiral to dangerous levels to protect those who rely on them. This will also depend strongly on the Queen/female's magical level as well, since they're more cautious in the steps to such a dance, whereas males are more reckless and tend to get carried away by emotion in the heat of the moment.
The second division among the males and females (yes, there is more) is that of their Jewel (or magic power level). Most members of the Blood are gifted with a Birthright Jewel. Through the Offering to the Darkness, the Blood can earn Jewels up to three levels darker than the jewel they are born with; tapping into these deeper or darker reservoirs is called "descending", and darker stones allow for more potent magic. The Blood can channel magic without possessing a stone, but their Jewels store reservoirs of power to add to their own. The darkest Jewels one can receive for a Birthright is Red (with the exception of Jaenelle, who breaks all rules by being Witch and is born with thirteen Birthright Black). The Birthright ceremony is performed at an altar, usually by a Priestess, and occurs in early childhood. The Offering to the Darkness occurs at the end of puberty into early adulthood. The darker a Jewel, the more power it holds, which in turn can be used by its wearer.
The jewels are (from lightest/weakest to darkest/most powerful): White, Yellow, Tiger Eye, Rose, Summer-sky, Purple Dusk, Opal, Green, Sapphire, Red, Gray, Ebon-gray, Black. (Opal is the dividing line between darker and lighter jewels because it can be either. it also has two kinds, Blood Opal and Light Opal)
SO, with all that explained now, I can get to the actual part about Daemon. Daemon is a half-Dhemlan, half-Hayllian Warlord Prince. He was born with Red Jewels and descended to Black during his Offering. He is the only natural-born male Black Widow, something thought to be impossible, but his father Saetan was the first male to train to become one and it passed down to Daemon when he was born, though he lets very few people know he has this innate ability.
His family is made up of: his father, Saetan Daemon SaDiablo (who he received his name from and also the reason he goes by Daemon Sadi). He was never legally claimed as the son of the High Lord, however, due to the machinations of Dorothea, who intended him to be a tool for her to use, and so (along with his half-brother, who was made for the same reason) is considered a bastard. His mother is Tersa, a broken Black Widow who first prophesied the coming of Jaenelle, Witch, Dreams Made Flesh, however Daemon was raised thinking his mother was Dorothea’s cousin Hepsbah, giving the Priestess another leash to control him. It wasn’t revealed until later who his true parents were - a secret that was kept from him for 1700 years. His half-brother, Lucivar (they shared Saetan as a father) is his closest (and possibly only) friend throughout his life, as both of them despised the state the Blood has fallen too and resent their enforced slavery more than anything. Together, they’ve destroyed hundreds of courts and worthless Queens who sought to break them. There are many other characters that have an effect on him and interact with him, as the Trilogy has a huge cast list, but I’ve tried to touch on the most important ones here.
To give you a basic overview, Daemon was born into a court of intrigue, where Dorothea ruled her territory (and soon the entire realm) as a Priestess, rather than a Queen. Normally this was not possible, but she was ambitious and had the High Priestess of Hell (Hekatah, Saetan’s former wife and a real hateful bitch) backing her. As a Red-Jeweled Priestess, she destroyed the young witches who would grow to be Queens stronger than her and might usurp her position, leaving only Lighter-Jeweled Queens she could control. She bound the powerful Princes and Warlord Princes to her, thinking they would serve since she was the most powerful female around, but they still instinctively sought a Queen, because that is who they are created to serve.
She tricked Saetan into getting two powerful Witches (one a Black Widow, one a Healer) pregnant so she could control him and his two powerful offspring, but her plan backfired, making an eternal enemy of Saetan, but it granted her the possession of Daemon (a Black-jeweled Warlord Prince) and Lucivar (an Ebon-Grey Warlord Prince). However, her intentions to use them to mate with her puppet Queens and Priestesses came to little use, as both of them were strong-willed and unable to be broken. She controls them both through a Ring of Obedience, something created to keep powerful males in check - a ring magically wrapped about their genitals that sends pain through them to bring them to their knees, or worse.
She made both into pleasure slaves, hoping that the centuries of humiliation and degradation and pain/punishment when they rebelled would eventually wear them down. Lucivar fought and struggled, refusing to capitulate and be used. Daemon sought another way to fight her. He became a pleasure slave, learned the skills in the bedroom and excelled at them beyond anyone’s imagination.
He becomes known as ‘The Sadist’ because of the excruciating pleasure he gives his female ‘owners’, but he is also the singularly most powerful and volatile male alive, Ringed or not. He is known for destroying hundreds of courts, and many queens who underestimated him, showed him their weakness. There’s a tale of how he escaped one court and hid himself so thoroughly that he remained free for over a hundred years until he was found, and then he massacred over two thousand warlords sent to recapture him. He could have remained free at that time, because no one possessed a force capable of matching him, but Dorothea still possessed Lucivar, his half-brother, and she sent word to Daemon that he had until the new moon to return to her court, or she would send him a piece of his brother every day after that in punishment for his arrogance.
Daemon surrendered. But he didn’t stop rebelling. He turned Dorothea’s own game against her, learning the skills she sought to break him with and making them his own, as well as becoming a master at manipulation and intrigue, always staying a step ahead of her and beating her at her own game.
Daemon never enjoyed what he was, what Dorothea forced him to do, and become. He hated it, loathed it, and he made all his owners and patrons pay for using him, and he never let them make the mistake of letting them think he got any enjoyment from their own, merely in the knowledge that he was using them instead of the other way around. He’s sadistic, he’s devious, he’s manipulative, and he does it all in a silky, suave way that you don’t even realize you’ve been had until it is far too late. He was helpless to stop the degradation and perversion of the society he might have once respected, and this frustrated and infuriated him, so he retaliated the only way he could. While Dorothea destroyed the Blood that opposed her, he destroyed the Blood that followed her.
Most thought this was a pointless struggle, because - while powerful - Daemon was still a slave and Dorothea held all the power. But Daemon wasn’t planning on overcoming her himself. He was waiting for his Queen.
Seven hundred years ago, Tersa (his unknown mother and a broken/mad Black Widow) had given a prophecy, that SHE was coming. Not a witch, but Witch. Dreams Made Flesh. The living Myth. The Queen to surpass all Queens, who would break Terreille and Kaeleer asunder, ridding them of the taint that had been slowly destroying them for centuries, and healing them to make them whole once more. Daemon waited for her, longed for her, dreamed of her, as so many of the true Blood and Kindred did. They were all waiting for her, to serve her, to have them heal their lands and their very magic. Daemon wanted her more than any; he knew she would be the kind of Queen he craved to serve, his other half; he knew he was destined to be her lover, her Consort.
Except when she finally appeared, when he finally found her, she was a child, a young girl caught in the machinations of a powerful and tainted family who knew nothing of the power she possessed. They believed her unjeweled and suffering from madness because she spoke of creatures and beings that no longer existed, and traveling to places they’d never heard of. In truth, Jaenelle had been traveling through the realms on her own power since she was very, very young, had befriended the Kindred, as well as dark-jeweled queens and warlord princes (including his own half-brother Lucivar who becomes her Protector, and his father Saetan, who becomes her Steward, teacher, and mentor) throughout both kingdoms. She not only possesses the Black Jewel, she possesses thirteen of them, as well as a set of twelve lighter-colored jewels, a range of power that is unheard of and near terrifying to those who know the struggle it is to control one. Jaenelle is naïve to almost everything involving Craft (what they refer to magic as), paying no attention to any of the careful restrictions all Blood follow in order to not lose themselves in the sheer power of magic. Limitations mean nothing to her, and her child-like exuberance to learn and try everything is a terrifying thing to Daemon at first, as her logic defies anything he’s ever come up against before.
Daemon, Lucivar, and Saetan worriedly watch over her as she is growing up in Chaillot, one of the territories in Terreille. Her grandmother is the territory Queen (serving Dorothea, who knows nothing about Witch’s birth), but Jaenelle’s family doesn’t understand her, doesn’t realize that Witch has been born and walks among them, they are blind to her abilities, and because of this neglect, Jaenelle ends up being abused, physically, mentally and emotionally by both her family and the ‘doctors’ that are meant to treat her suspected madness. When the physical abuse escalates to the point that Jaenelle is nearly Broken (cut off from her sanity and magic completely) Daemon struggles (a psychic struggle, taking place not in a physical realm, but a mental one) to keep her mind and power tethered to her physical body, using all the power he possesses, along with the help of his father, but in exchange, he loses his own tether to his own body and descends into madness, Broken like Jaenelle almost was. Having lost his grasp on sanity - and on Jaenelle - Daemon believes he wasn’t in time to save her, and his sorrow only adds to his madness
At this same time, Lucivar feels the echo of this great struggle and believes Jaenelle is lost to them forever. Heartbroken and enraged - and believing Daemon is responsible for Jaenelle’s death - he gives a final struggle and breaks free from Dorothea’s hold, and in a last act before dying, he sets out to destroy his half-brother. He finds him mad and mourning and decides that leaving Daemon to live with his guilt is a more fitting punishment then unknowing death, and condemns his brother to the Twisted Kingdom, the realm of insanity, where those who are Broken dwell.
Jaenelle spends two years in a coma, with Saetan watching over her. Lucivar survives his desperate bid for freedom against all odds and finds himself in Kaeleer where Jaenelle now is. Finally awakening, she has no memory of what happens to her and begins a slow recovery, but soon she is back to full power again and begins to form her court. Dorothea and Hekatah, however, are still trying to spread their domain into Kaeleer and start it with an attack on the Kindred, wanting to claim their territories for the human races. Enraged, Jaenelle fights back the only way she can - she makes her Offering to the Darkness and comes out of it with six jewels that have descended darker into Ebony - a never before seen jewel. Now, having completed the necessary steps to become a full Queen, Jaenelle sets up her court in Ebon Askavi - one of the central territories in Kaeleer and all the territories (Kindred and Blood alike) in the Realm - with the exception of Dorothea’s small foothold territory known as Little Terreille - swear their allegiance to Witch, their new Queen, giving Jaenelle full control over all of Kaeleer.
With Saetan set up as her Steward and Lucivar as her First Escort (a title for guardian and protector) Jaenelle turns her attentions to helping Daemon find his way out of the Twisted Kingdom and back to himself and his sanity once more. It is a tough struggle - again on a mental plane rather than a physical one, as his body wanders Terrielle, his mind/Self is trapped on a crumbling island surrounded by a lake of blood and creatures created by his guilt and self-loathing continually circle, waiting for his small islane of remaining sanity to crumble away completely so they may devour him - as he is haunted and Broken by what he thinks he has done and the guilt that consumes him, as well as the guilty memories of 1700 years worth of actions, abuse, bloodshed, etc. But with Jaenelle's guidance, he finally finds his way back to sanity, reconnecing his mind/Self with his body, and joins them in Kaeleer. Her Court views him as an outsider at first and distrusts him, because his reputation as the Sadist made him notorious in all three Realms as someone dangerous, uncontrollable, and not to be trusted, though Jaenelle intends to set him as her Consort, completing the three-sided protection every Queen should have at the innermost center of her Court (Consort, Steward, First Escort).
Before things can quite turn out happily ever after, however, Dorothea and Hekatah launch one last risky attempt to bring Kaeleer under their control. Lucivar, along with his wife and young son, are captured and held prisoner. Saetan goes with the intent to bargain himself for them and is captured as well. Jaenelle’s surrender is demanded, but she has no intention of surrendering. Instead, she sends Daemon, who must use all his cunning and notorious skills on both of the twisted witches to give Jaenelle time to prepare, because it’s not Kaeleer going to war against Terreille, it is Jaenelle herself.
However, to accomplish it, she asks the hardest thing she’s ever asked of Daemon. She sends him to Dorothea’s camp, where Saetan, Lucivar, and Lucivar’s wife and child are captive. There, Daemon must become the Sadist one more time, in order to distract Dorothea, convince her he’s been controlling Jaenelle all along for his own motives, and keep Dorothea preoccupied long enough for Jaenelle to prepare for what she must do to purge the three realms from taint once and for all.
To make her believe he’s playing Jaenelle as he’s always played Dorothea, he stages the horrific murder of Lucivar’s wife and child in front of Lucivar and Saetan and the entire camp. The pair, who - up to this point - believed he was faking and really had a plan (which he did, but they had to believe him, too, for it to fool Dorothea). Lucivar flies into a rage, and Saetan, who was never entirely certain of his son’s loyalties due to the life he’s lived - believes that their one hope is now gone.
Dorothea - who’s always wanted to possess Daemon and knows what he’s capable of should he choose to use it - has never met Jaenelle face to face, so the ruse works. Dorothea underestimates both Daemon and Jaenelle and gives Jaenelle enough time to gather the strength to do what she must to finally heal the realms of Terreille and Kaeleer. Which is descending into the webs that link the magic themselves and using her own magic (and magical aid from all the demon-dead - or undead), burns out the taint infecting the Blood - and all the tainted Blood themselves - within the span of a few horrible, terrifying moment, that sweeps through every blood in all three kingdoms.
When she is done, those tainted by greed and Dorothea and Hekatah’s ambitions are gone, burned out of existence, leaving only the True Blood, those who lived to serve. The effort, however, nearly destroyed her, and it was only the combined efforts of Daemon, Saetan, and Lucivar that kept her from completely burning herself out along with everyone else. They kept her from vanishing from existence entirely, but upon waking in the aftermath, Jaenelle is physically gone, with only hints and vague hopes that she may return.
At the end of the series, Daemon does find her alive. The Kindred have spent months nursing her back to health, because there was so little of her left, and even months later, the first sight sickens Daemon, because he doesn’t know how she could still be ALIVE in the state she’s in, let alone what she was like months ago. But she is alive, and that’s what matters most to Daemon.
Please give us a detailed description of your character's personality:
Daemon is a complicated character. In truth, he has two personas, but they are so closely intertwined that you can’t really have one without the other. There is Daemon, and then there is The Sadist.
The Sadist is how the world knows Daemon Sadi. The Sadist is a cold, cruel, unfeeling bastard who manipulates everyone around him for his own purposes, or for the sheer amusement it brings him. He is unparalleled in the bedchamber, known for giving ‘excruciating pleasure’ sometimes without ever once touching his patron, and is renowned for never getting any personal pleasure (or aroused) from the experience. He is contemptuous and arrogant and volatile. He weaves intrigues so deep and complex that no one can figure out what his actual goal is until it’s far too late. He’s destroyed courts, Queens, and armies. He is uncontrollable, and often, not even the Ring of Obedience is enough to bring him to heel. He is unbreakable and unconquerable, and most of the women (tainted by greed and power) are fascinated by this and determined to possess him, naively thinking that they’ll finally be the one to tame or break him. None ever do.
Different stories are told of his ruthlessness and cruelty. One, of the two thousand Warlords he slaughtered when Dorothea sent an army to recapture him. Another of a Queen who pushed him too far and in a matter of moments, there was nothing left of her except for a twisted mass on the bed, and blood and body parts painting the walls red. At the end of the series, when he must convince Dorothea he is still the Sadist, he plays a game and creates an illusion of having slowly roasted - cooked, not burned - Lucivar’s wife and young child. He parades them before Lucivar and Saetan, knowing he must make them hate him in order for Dorothea to finally believe he is as cruel as the Sadist is reputed to be. The scene is disturbingly macabre and he never bats an eye throughout the entire scenario.
Lucivar refers to his brother as a silky court-trained liar. He also calls him Bastard, but that’s his affectionate nickname for his half-brother (Daemon returns the favor by referring to Lucivar as ‘Prick’). But the observation is a true one. When Daemon gets angry, he doesn’t go hot, he goes cold. Icy, chilling, numbingly cold. He doesn’t raise his voice, he doesn’t fly into tempers; he goes quiet, deceptively soft, his voice crooning, but this is also a sign that he’s at his most dangerous. The drop in temperature around him is also a warning sign of severe danger approaching.
Daemon views the world through the Sadist’s eyes. It’s what’s kept him alive, and kept him from giving in to the years of humiliation, of abuse, of being forced to serve court after court and queen after queen. The Sadist is not all he is, however. Secretly, he yearns for Witch and always has, ever since Tersa first gave him the message that She was coming over 700 years before. She is what keeps him going, moreso than his Sadist protection.
When it comes to Jaenelle, you see Daemon for what he should have been, had he not spent 1700 years in slavery. All his training he learned to one day make her happy, to give her pleasure. There’s no coldness in him when it comes to her. Only with her is there heat and passion and actual love. He is patient, and when she is growing up it takes all his patience and cunning to keep up with her, although he loses count of how many times he wants to throttle her. She’s more than even he anticipated and it constantly catches him off-guard, something unknown to the Sadist, who has a plan for everything and never says or does anything without a deliberate reason.
She is one of the few - possibly the only - people who makes him happy, makes him content, makes him laugh. He is cynical and sarcastic, with a dry, cutting wit, usually at other people’s expense, especially if they are idiots. He has his own code of morality, one he constantly follows, even if it looks to be otherwise. For as many courts and tainted Queens as he’s destroyed, used, humiliated, there are just as many innocents he’s protected - secretly - and provided for, in his own way. He will go to extreme lengths to thwart Dorothea and her ambitions, but he’s careful of the innocents caught in the crossfire, because that is what it means to be a Warlord Prince. He lives up to his beliefs in what the Blood should be.
Please give us a detailed physical description of your character: Daemon is half-Dhemlan, half-Hayllian and is described as tall and broad-shouldered (for the record, I’m going to make him probably about 6’1, 6’2). Since he’s lived his life as a pleasure slave, he’s always kept his body toned and muscular and in perfect shape because he was able to use his body as one of his most potent weapons against the witches that owned him and he preferred to keep all his weapons well honed. He has a deep and cultured voice, with a tendency to have a husky quality to it when he talks. He has golden eyes (typical to the races of Terreille) and thick black hair, and warm golden-brown skin that is a little lighter than most Hayllians because of his Dhemlan ancestry.
Since we’re never given an actual image of Daemon, even on the book covers (which are all Jaenelle and a few Kindred) I’ve chosen a few icons of Wissam Hanna for his pb, who is the closest fit to his description and personality that I’ve found, with the exception of the golden eyes, and even there, it's as close as I can humanly get.
What point in time are you taking your character from when he/she appears at Landel's?: I’m going to take him from very near the end of the trilogy. Directly after Jaenelle has spiraled down to her full power and wiped out the tainted Blood but before he’s reunited with her.
He’s still crushed from her not telling him that what she was doing might cause her to leave him, a pain emphasized by the fact that she made him promise not to take any unnecessary risks and misled him to believe that he would return and they’d be married - a reason she had to give, else he’d have never left her side and he needed to.
He’s unsure as to whether the Kindred will indeed be able to heal her, wherever she is, and he blames himself for not being able to save her. Again. Plus he’s been dealing again with the distrust of the Court because of his actions in his final play as the Sadist, because the amount of cruelty and… well, sadism he was forced to display is not something one quickly forgets.
What kinds of magical/special/crazy powers does your character have, if any?: Daemon’s magic is, of course, innate. His jewels - both Black and Birthright Red - are what store his excess of power, magic to be called on at will. It can be drained out by using extreme amounts of magic, and is possible to shatter one’s jewels by straining them beyond their limits.
Also, being a natural Black Widow, he has an immunity to poison/venom, and can kill a person with a single prick of the snake tooth hidden beneath the nail of his right ring finger. The Black Widow also gives him the ability to manipulate a person’s mind, their senses, making him an expert in illusion and mindcraft. He’s able to do simple illusions that affect the eyes of many, or to do complex ones within someone’s own mind, letting them see what they want to see. He can also speak through thoughts, but that could be only to others of the Blood (or who have magic).
As the series really only deals with Blood, it says that they can talk telepathically through psychic threads, either to mass recipients, or personal ones along the threads and webs that connect all their jewels. Such psychic thoughts will usually be perceived to have a hint of color of the speaker’s jewel as well as an awareness of the speaker themselves.
In Landels, of course, there’s no other Blood, so I’m not sure if I will have that be useful, but perhaps he might still be able to use it to speak to those who DO have magic. In the series, he is capable of brushing over minds to gather surface thoughts or intentions, whether the person is Blood or not.
If present, how do you plan to tweak those powers to make him/her appropriately hindered in the setting of Landel's?:
(coming soon - details still being worked out about what his specific abilities will be)
Does your character have any other non-magical skills or abilities that we should know about?: He excels at intrigue. He excels at seduction. He excels at being pretty? He can move silently (can also levitate himself, per his magic, although his half-brother Lucivar has wings and can fly) He’s highly intelligent, well-learned in his universe(s) as he’s had 1700 to study and learn. He’s a master manipulator and a dangerous man to have as an enemy.
How about improbable appendages?: See information above about the snake tooth, which I think might count as at least a unique addition. Also? He is very nicely endowed. XD Big plus when you’re a pleasure slave.
Please give us an idea of where you'd like to take your character within the scope of the Landel's Damned RP: First of all, he’s going to seek out who’s running the place, and why. While he’ll be impressed with the extent of the setup Landels has running here, Daemon does not take well to being leashed. By anyone. Although he does know the value of making a good bargain, and has been known before to make deals with demonspawn themselves to accomplish his goals. He does, however, have a known soft spot for innocents, those unable to do for themselves. Even if he doesn’t help them outright, he manipulates situations to get a better outcome, or at least tries to. I can see him intending to stand a bit apart, but he gets around a lot, makes it his purpose to find out as much as he can from anyone willing to give up or trade the information. Then he’ll want to take it to the head, but not until he knows everything he can learn about what he’s going up against. Like I said, he excels at intrigues and prefers to work from the shadows, while spinning a ruse and setting a scene out in the open. He might even purposefully set himself up as aligning with the bad guys in order to gain their trust and learn what he can about them before striking.
What kind of psychological effect do you see Landel's Institute having on your character?: At first, he’ll be pissed. No, scratch that, he’ll spend the whole time being pissed, he’ll just show very little of it. Like I described earlier, when Daemon gets pissed, he goes cold, he goes cunning, and you never know what angle he’s working until it’s too late. Considering I’m yanking him from his universe while he’s still frantically searching for Jaenelle in the aftermath of her obliteration of the Blood’s taint, he will be highly unamused by the interruption, as this is a highly unwanted separation and he needs to get back to forcing the Kindred to let him find her, wherever they have her hidden to do the healing.
As for psychological effect in itself, Daemon has lived through 1700 years of intrigue, machinations, and being used as a puppet on the whim of an arrogant and sadistic Queen. On one hand, some of the methods of this place will not come as a surprise to him, because he is fully aware of the depths humanity can sink to in their sadistic pleasures and experimentation. He’s witnessed them all, he’s endured them all, and occasionally, he’s replicated them himself.
Given that this RP takes place in an unsettling and outright horrific environment, how do you justify your character as being appropriate in both body and mind for this kind of setting?: Horrific environments are nothing new to Daemon. He’s endured them and created them himself. Living as long as he has with Terreille becoming more and more tainted with every century, there were unheard of inhumanities, practiced on anyone in Dorothea’s way, or merely for her own amusement. It’s why he returned the Sadist’s cruelty on her and her pawns at every available opportunity, despite the consequences.
He has, however, once descended into the Twisted Kingdom, into madness, became what they referred to as a ‘Shattered Chalice’ Losing Jaenelle - thinking he’s destroyed Jaenelle - was too much for him and he spent eight years wandering the darkness and shadows of insanity. Jaenelle, once healed and returned to herself - found him, healed him as best as she could, but his ‘Chalice’ the representation of his form that contains the magic he can wield and his sense of self, will never be as fully whole as it once was. It’s cracked and will always be so. It was only through Jaenelle that he returned from the Twisted Kingdom at all. Should someone be able to out-manipulate him, fuck with his head badly enough, it wouldn’t be unheard of for him to slip over the precipice once again and lose himself once more in the Twisted Kingdom of madness.