» OOC | Character Information
Series: The Vampire Diaries
Series' Medium: Live Action.
Character: Damon Salvatore
Age: 170. Looks 25.
Sex/Gender: Male
"Real" Name: Darren Messina
APPEARANCE:
Damon has sharply defined features, with dark, short, shaggy hair and intensely blue eyes. He's not a large man; his build is lithe and he stands at just 5'9". He's rarely seen wearing anything except black; when he does change it up, it's to equally muted colours. He generally gives off an aura of charismatic confidence, though it can turn dangerous quickly. Easily bored, it translates to his body language-Damon rarely stands still; even when he's just talking, he's always moving or doing something. If there's something nearby to fiddle with, chances are it'll be in his hands.
On the middle finger of his left hand is a large ring with a lapis lazuli stone encased in an intricate silver crest engraved with a D. It's kind of gaudy, but the ring is what allows him to walk in sunlight-a gift from Katherine.
PERSONALITY:
There are two important things to note about vampires: one is that their emotions can be switched on and off at their will; they can keep their humanity if they want, but it's far more natural for them to dismiss it altogether and live guilt-free. (Later canon implies that it cannot be turned off completely, but they are far more inclined to kill and seek pleasure in the hunt and thus their humanity will always be in direct conflict with their predatory instincts, leading vampires like Damon to make a conscious decision to bury their human self as much as possible). The other is that whatever they felt as a human and whatever personality traits they had, it all intensifies as a vampire-love for a person, for instance.
Damon very much straddles the line between human and vampire, and it's clear he wants people to believe that he has no humanity left. He denies it when anyone sees through him, or at the very least looks mildly perturbed at the suggestion. In fact, it seems to disturb even him when he finally acknowledges that he doesn't want to kill everyone anymore. Being a good person really isn't something he believes he's capable of. He has, after all, spent over a century embracing life as a self-serving psychopath (as Elena so succinctly puts it). While he admits to Stefan that his guilt is there if he wants it to be, he also tells Jeremy later that he lived with it switched off for a long time and that it was easier that way. Still, even before he openly acknowledges that he's let himself feel again, something's always lurked beneath the surface: his devotion to Katherine, his increasing willingness to help Elena, his complicated relationship with his brother-even the way he's obviously hurt by betrayal and his unwillingness to extend his trust to anyone out of the belief that they'll just turn on him.
None of this means that Damon secretly has a heart of gold. That he walks such a fine line between human and monster is part of what makes him so dangerous: he is entirely capable of feeling love and betrayal and everything else, and he's equally capable of acting out on those feelings by killing and manipulating anyone he needs or wants to. Stefan isn't wrong when he observes that Damon doesn't get mad, he gets even. Simply put, Damon can be a brat; 145 years walking the earth as one of the most powerful creatures in existence means that he's rarely denied anything. Try to tell him what to do, and he'll either laugh at you or rip your throat out. What he wants, he gets-eventually. Even if the bodies pile up. And when he can't have it, he gets pretty pissed. This side of him isn't a new development-his rivalry with Stefan over Katherine began when he was a human. And really, even as a human, he was willing to help Katherine kill to feed.
Knowing Elena does change this about him somewhat. Damon cares a lot for Elena, more than he'll ever admit, and more than that, he appreciates her in her own right. She's the last person who should've extended her hand to him-he's nearly killed her and her friends on multiple occasions-but she did and it means something to him. Damon doesn't exactly have a lot of people who would consider him worth saving. He originally viewed human beings as objects to be toyed with, and it's not like he's stopped killing people when he has to, but by his own admission, he's found himself wanting to save people, too, all of a sudden. It's a new development, though, so he's still kind of fucked up about it. Truthfully, the closer Damon feels he's getting to his humanity, the more unstable he becomes and the chances of him snapping and falling back to what he knows best (read: killing innocent people) shoot through the roof. Such is the midlife crisis of a vampire. Elena might've allowed him to hesitantly trust someone other than himself, but she's a very, very small circle of one. Possibly two, if you count Stefan, but Stefan's a more complicated issue. In any case, there currently two people Damon would definitely drop everything and risk his life for: Stefan and Elena. The rest of the population is up for debate.
On the subject of Stefan-it deserves its own paragraph. They used to be extremely close until Katherine split them apart. Damon resents his brother greatly and there's nothing false about how much he hates the guy or how much he enjoys fucking with him, but at the same time, he does care about him in some weird way, though any suggestion of such will be flatly met with denial. But given that Damon is stronger than his brother, what with Stefan being on the squirrel diet and all, it's telling that Damon never actually kills him despite multiple threats to do so. He saves his brother on two occasions, and he doesn't hesitate-though part of that is no doubt the perverted sense that no one's allowed to mess with his brother except him ("If anyone's going to kill you, it's going to be me.") Damon doesn't have any friends and humans tend to die; Stefan's the only one who's known him from the start, even before he became a vampire. It counts for something.
These are all deeper issues, though. In general, Damon has a need to keep himself occupied in some way-he doesn't do boredom-enjoys a fun night out, and has no trouble chatting with just about anyone. When he wants to, he can be extremely charming. Plus, he's easy on the eyes and that hardly hurts his case. He's also manipulative to the nth degree and he's not afraid to do what it takes. It's telling that he manages to gain the trust of the very people who are specifically looking for a vampire. When it comes to people's emotions, Damon is far from oblivious to them. There's a reason why he's so good at mindfuck.
If he doesn't care about being nice, he has a razor-sharp tongue that he's not afraid to use and enough bitter cynicism to fill an ocean. He knows how to cut deep and he'll do it on purpose whether because he's pissed or because he doesn't like someone. Even when he's not trying to hurt anyone's feelings, he doesn't hold back on his bluntness. When Elena tells him she found her birth mother, he doesn't hesitate to reply that her birth mother sucks because she abandoned her. As much as Damon keeps up a front, there are moments such as this where he can get a bit transparent if you know what to look for-not a full picture, maybe, but not a complete lie, either.
Predictability doesn't apply to him, either. His mood can flip in an instant; he's one of those people who'll shake your hand and slit your throat within the space of a second. He's not unstable, though, at least not in the sense that his temper will overwhelm self-preservation. Damon only seems like the impulsive type to people who don't realize how much he can get away with. He doesn't have to stop and consider the consequences of, say, tossing someone off a building because the consequences simply don't apply to him the way they would to mere mortals. He is, however, perfectly aware of what the consequences that do apply to him are: he stops drinking human blood and killing people when he realizes the townspeople are on his tail, for example. With the exception of a few notable instances, Damon does everything with cold calculation. It's rarely obvious as to when he's lost his temper; by the time anyone's realized they've gotten on his bad side, they're already dead.
In the end, this brief exchange probably says more about Damon than anything else could:
Damon: My actions, what I do, it's not your fault. I own them. You are not allowed to feel my guilt.
Stefan: Do you feel guilt?
Damon: If I want to, it's there.
HISTORY:
We're never told when Damon was born or anything about his life prior to his meeting Katherine. A Salvatore, he is of Italian descent. We know that he deserted the Confederate Army and that for this reason, among others, his father, Giuseppe, disapproved of him, calling him at one point a great disappointment. Damon was best friends with his brother, Stefan, who came to Damon's defence against their father on at least one occasion that we know of.
Sometime around 1864, a girl named Katherine Pierce arrives in the small town of Mystic Falls, Virginia. Although they don't realize it at first, she is a vampire. Both brothers fall for her and she toys with them both, never quite choosing one or the other. This is where the rivalry starts to take root. While Stefan is under her compulsion, Damon later claims (and Katherine's handmaiden confirms) that he never was and that what they had was real. A flashback shows him actively participating in a hunt where she shows him "how it's done." She has him kiss her with blood still on her lips, giving Damon his first taste.
Unfortunately, the townspeople-"The Founders," they are later called, a small circle that included Giuseppe-aren't exactly oblivious to the presence of vampires. They begin to find ways to trap and kill them. Aware of this, Stefan suggests that they could talk to their father in hopes that Katherine can be spared, but Damon swears him to secrecy. Stefan later goes to see Giuseppe and questions whether all vampires are really so bad, thereby tipping their father off. Giuseppe has Stefan ingest vervain-a drug-like plant to vampires-and when Katherine feeds on him, she collapses and is taken away along with the others. They try to break her out, but are both shot instead.
Emily Bennett-a powerful witch and Katherine's handmaiden-explains to Stefan after he wakes up that Katherine had given each brother a special ring, and that they had both been drinking Katherine's blood for weeks (vampire blood being what needs to be in your system at the time of death for a transformation to begin); Damon, for his part, partook in this drinking willingly with no compulsion required. Damon happened to wake up earlier during the night. He tells his brother that he watched them take Katherine into the church with the other vampires and set fire to it. He's clearly devastated by her death, especially having been witness to it. What he doesn't know is that Emily has succeeded in protecting Katherine, as per Damon's request.
As it turns out, on that last night, Damon had gone to Emily, asking her to protect Katherine when he realized that the townspeople were coming after all the vampires, that he would pay any price for it. In exchange for protecting Emily's lineage, Emily sealed Katherine-along with the other twenty-six vampires-inside a tomb underneath the church, harnessing power from a passing comet into a crystal to work the spell. The church went up in flames, but no one was actually burned.
Emily keeps this from both brothers initially (and Stefan doesn't actually find out until a century and a half later), hoping that they wouldn't complete the transformation if they believed her dead. This is pretty close to what happens. Damon's entire reason for wanting to turn was because of Katherine; without her, his reason to do so is gone. Stefan, however, hops on the human blood wagon a bit quicker. After he changes, he brings back a girl for Damon and eventually gets Damon to drink from her. Stefan insists that they can explore eternity together, but Damon promises he'll make it an eternity of misery.
The next 145 years are largely untold. Two things are clear: Damon hounds Stefan, making good on his promise, and he devotes almost everything he does into freeing Katherine. He needs the crystal and the comet to return in order to reverse the spell and break the seal. In 1989, he has a fling with a witch named Bree. She helps him attempt to get into the tomb, but it fails. In 2007, Damon is approached by a woman named Isobel who asks him to turn her which he agrees to do. Her husband, Alaric Saltzman, catches him feeding on her, but believes-or convinces himself, anyway-that she was simply killed, not turned.
The story picks up when Damon returns to his home in Mystic Falls. No one knows why he's back, but it all has to do with Katherine: the comet has returned which means he has a chance to open the tomb. At first, though, it seems as if he's just there to fuck with Stefan, often by going through his brother's Katherine-lookalike (she's a damn near clone of Katherine) girlfriend, Elena Gilbert. In the process, however, he does start to get to know Elena a bit-and she grows on him eventually. This doesn't mean he ceases to mess with Stefan or her. When Stefan tells him he believes Damon has some humanity left, Damon promptly kills the school's football coach to prove otherwise. He attacks a girl named Vicki and toys with the situation, compelling her to believe that Stefan was the one who did it-so that Stefan would have to drink human blood if he wanted to be strong enough to undo it, though when Stefan refuses, Damon decides to wipe Vicki's memories, anyway.
He also takes Caroline as his girlfriend. She sleeps with him the first time willingly, but everything after that is compulsion-she lets him feed on her and he uses her to gain access to the house where he hid Katherine's crystal once upon a time. Elena discovers the bite marks on Caroline and confronts Damon about it. Having no more use for Caroline, anyway, Damon decides to drain her dry, but Stefan's spiked her blood with vervain. He locks Damon in the basement with every intention of keeping him there for the next fifty years. It doesn't even last a week-Damon remains strong enough to compel Caroline from miles away to come free him. Zach-a human Salvatore descendant who lives in the boarding house-tries to stop Damon from escaping and gets his neck snapped for the trouble. Damon chases Caroline until she flees into the sunlight where he can't follow without his sunlight-protection ring.
When night falls, Damon slaughters an entire group of kids getting high in the woods. He calls Stefan to demand his ring back while he burns the bodies, threatening to go after Elena if he doesn't get what he wants. After he hangs up, he realizes one of the victims-Vicki-is alive. Seemingly on a whim, he takes her home. She's no fun half-dead, so he feeds her his blood to heal the bite, compels her to believe that she loves the blood, and they proceed to dance all the way into Stefan's room where they trash it. Vicki eventually confesses all of her insecurities to Damon. While his reaction is blunt ("you are so damaged"), there's a sense of something close to pity in there. Somewhere. He finally declares that death is the only solution and kills her. With his blood still in her system, she begins to turn.
Meanwhile, the Founder's Council-a small group of people in on the vampire situation-decide to hunt down the vampire they believe to be in town. One of the group members, Logan Fell, takes down Stefan with a wooden bullet, but Damon drains him before Stefan gets staked. Damon demands his ring back and Stefan obliges.
What happens to Vicki isn't important here; the gist of it is that she loses control of her bloodlust and is killed after she tries to eat her boyfriend, Jeremy (Elena's brother). Damon materializes to dispose of the body and Elena confronts him about what he did to Vicki. He remains unflinchingly indifferent; if anything, Elena's persistence only serves to make him colder. It isn't until Elena leaves that Damon seems to regard Vicki with something akin to regret. It's pretty unlikely he feels any Stefan-style guilt; he probably just kind of thinks it's too bad she ended up dead so quick. Still, either some sense of responsibility lurks under there or he at least feels enough for Elena to want to do something for her, or possibly a bit of both-Damon sure as hell won't acknowledge it if there's any truth to either of that-but in any case, he offers to wipe Jeremy's memories of Vicki and to take away his suffering since Stefan isn't powerful enough to make sure the memory wipe is permanent.
Now aware that there are people in town looking for a vampire, Damon worms his way into the confidences of the Council, first by supplying vervain. When Stefan's best vampire friend, Lexi, shows up for a visit, it provides the perfect opportunity. Damon sets her up so that it looks as if she were the vampire causing the deaths, then kills her in front of the sheriff-one of the council members. He doesn't realize Stefan is watching, though it probably wouldn't stop him if he had. It does succeed in throwing them off the vampire hunting trail. For the time being, anyway.
Damon doesn't necessarily feel bad about killing Lexi, but he does feel bad about killing his brother's closest friend in that "I'm sorry I ate all of your birthday cake" kind of way so he tries to make nice by bringing coffee and promising not to kill anyone...for a week. Stefan, deciding to try and pry (again) into the reason why Damon is even in town, begins to buddy up with his brother. He has a drink with Damon, invites him to a game of darts and then football, a game Damon originally taught Stefan to play. Damon knows perfectly well Stefan is up to something, but indulges nevertheless until the end of the night. He finally tells Stefan the reason why he's here: Katherine is alive and he knows how to get her back using the crystal and the comet. Damon believes that he was the last one to see Katherine before everything one down that night, but Stefan says that he was actually the last one and implies that they were busy getting it on which...hardly helps Damon's mood.
Of course, since Caroline was holding the crystal shortly before Damon roofied on her blood and then subsequently gave it to Bonnie (Emily's descendant and a witch) Damon doesn't have the crystal at the moment. He tries several times to chase it down, but Bonnie won't give it to him and because of the deal he made with Emily, he can't actually hurt Bonnie.
Anyway, the crystal thing is a moot point because before Damon can get the crystal back from Bonnie, Emily possesses her. The problem is that it isn't just Katherine sealed in-it's all the vampires from 1864. Damon's willing to let them out to get revenge on the town, but he's obviously the only one. Emily destroys the crystal. Damon is understandably very upset and takes a good bite out of Bonnie, though she doesn't die.
With no more crystal, there's no reason for Damon to stay. Stefan asks where he'll go, and Damon notes he'll visit some friends to which Stefan replies he has no friends and Damon concedes the truth of it. He invites Stefan to come along with him; he's not serious, of course, in the sense that he thinks Stefan will actually agree, but it's not the first time he tries to get Stefan on his side. When he dicks with Stefan, it isn't always just arbitrary-he's often trying to get Stefan to acknowledge himself as a vampire and to drink human blood like normal vampires are supposed to do. It's true that it probably pisses him off that Stefan all self-righteous about the no human blood thing when Damon knows firsthand just how much Stefan loved it at first, but there's something deeper to it, too.
But then Logan shows up as a surprise vampire, leaving a body behind. He's killed within the episode, so he's only important in that he's the reason Damon doesn't leave and that he tells Damon that there's another way to get into the tomb. We get some new vampires in town who go after Elena and all of them soon discover that they need John Gilbert's journal to retrieve Emily's grimoire which contains how to reverse the spell (and a witch to do the magic, a.k.a. Bonnie).
Before this, though, Damon takes Elena on a short road trip after she flips her car. He basically just drives her to Atlanta after she passes out and convinces her to spend the day with him. He's really there to talk to Bree about the opening of the tomb, but they actually do have a nice time together until Lexi's vampire boyfriend shows up and tries to set him on fire. Elena pleads for his life and Damon is spared. It's always been clear from the start that Damon likes Elena as a person, but it's when she saves his life despite everything he's done that something probably begins to slowly change.
Katherine's still first and foremost on his mind, however. Not wanting the other vampires to be released, Stefan and Elena pretend to agree to help Damon get what he wants. Damon is suspicious, but Elena convinces him that Stefan is trustworthy. When Damon catches them digging up the grimoire without telling him, he's clearly hurt, not by Stefan but by Elena, because he'd expected different from her. He takes her hostage and forces his blood on her, threatening to turn her unless Stefan gives him the spellbook which Stefan of course hands over.
After Elena and Bonnie are kidnapped by other vampires who want into the tomb (Stefan rescues them, naturally), it becomes apparent that until Damon gets Katherine back, things aren't going to get better. Elena goes to try and convince him that they're willing to work with him for real this time. She takes off her necklace of vervain and tells him to compel the truth out of her, but Damon doesn't go that far. The gesture is enough. When she asks him why he hadn't compelled her in Atlanta, either, he tells her that it was because he wanted it to be real.
They manage to break open the tomb, but Katherine isn't even in there. Turns out, she escaped that very night and has been hanging around without bothering to tell Damon even though she knew perfectly well where he was. Crushed and left with no purpose ("nothing is important"), Damon spends the next little while self-medicating with booze and the blood of sorority girls, though he doesn't kill anyone. Another woman in his past comes up, though-Isobel, the woman he turned is two things: Elena's birth mother and the wife of a man named Alaric, a history teacher by day/vampire hunter by night. Alaric recognizes Damon, of course, and he pieces together what the connection is between Isobel and Alaric, though he doesn't know that she's also Elena's mother. He taunts Alaric in public about it. That night, Alaric breaks into his house, ready to stake him. Damon casually bats him around as he informs Alaric that he turned Isobel when she came to him asking to be made a vampire and that she obviously wasn't happy with her husband. And then he stabs Alaric with his own stake and watches him die.
Except Alaric doesn't actually die because he has a magic ring. He doesn't try to kill Damon again and they actually start to form an uneasy alliance. When Stefan is kidnapped by the vampires who escaped from the opened tomb, Damon and Elena both seek his help to launch a rescue mission. Damon's busy holding off the vampires, so he doesn't see Stefan drink Elena's blood, but it's not too hard to figure out Stefan's hooked when he spots his brother sucking down human blood from the blood bank like a junkie. (SOUND FAMILIAR? IT SHOULD.) Stefan goes a bit crazy, attacks a couple people, and then they lock him up to get the human blood out of his system. Damon refuses to admit that he cares about Stefan and maintains that he's only doing this because he doesn't need Stefan killing a bunch of people when the Founder's Council is still on their tail about vampires. After Stefan recovers, he thanks Damon, but Damon brushes him off. When Stefan tries to apologize about the past, Damon tells him that he doesn't hate Stefan because Stefan forced him to turn, but because Katherine was only supposed to turn Damon and Damon alone. Instead, she turned them both.
The hunt for the remaining vampires culminates during a big celebration in the town. There's a device that creates a high-frequency sound only vampires can hear which causes them extreme pain. Bonnie was supposed to have removed the spell on it, rendering it useless, but she lied about doing so. When it's switched on, pretty much all the vampires nearby-including Damon-drop like flies. They're quickly injected with vervain, then dumped in a basement that's set on fire. Stefan pulls Damon out after Bonnie uses her powers to suppress the fire.
ABILITIES:
• Physical: Speed/strength/so forth is slightly above human, but not by much. Healing is average.
• Senses: Can overhear whispered conversations if they occur in-thread, but not outside of that. Has night vision equal to a human with a flashlight. Can identify blood in the near vicinity.
• Compulsion: Effective once per DS/NS for a single physical command. He can no longer get inside someone's head to force dreams/his will/etc on them. Whether or not it works is completely dependent on the player. You'll be contacted beforehand if it ever occurs. If he does not keep up a steady diet of human blood, it will slowly cease to function.
• Being impaled with anything wood will remain particularly painful.
• He cannot enter any patient room without an express invitation from at least one occupant, unless the room is an unoccupied one.
• If his ring is ever removed, he will burn in the sun.
Series' Medium: Live Action.
Character: Damon Salvatore
Age: 170. Looks 25.
Sex/Gender: Male
"Real" Name: Darren Messina
APPEARANCE:
Damon has sharply defined features, with dark, short, shaggy hair and intensely blue eyes. He's not a large man; his build is lithe and he stands at just 5'9". He's rarely seen wearing anything except black; when he does change it up, it's to equally muted colours. He generally gives off an aura of charismatic confidence, though it can turn dangerous quickly. Easily bored, it translates to his body language-Damon rarely stands still; even when he's just talking, he's always moving or doing something. If there's something nearby to fiddle with, chances are it'll be in his hands.
On the middle finger of his left hand is a large ring with a lapis lazuli stone encased in an intricate silver crest engraved with a D. It's kind of gaudy, but the ring is what allows him to walk in sunlight-a gift from Katherine.
PERSONALITY:
There are two important things to note about vampires: one is that their emotions can be switched on and off at their will; they can keep their humanity if they want, but it's far more natural for them to dismiss it altogether and live guilt-free. (Later canon implies that it cannot be turned off completely, but they are far more inclined to kill and seek pleasure in the hunt and thus their humanity will always be in direct conflict with their predatory instincts, leading vampires like Damon to make a conscious decision to bury their human self as much as possible). The other is that whatever they felt as a human and whatever personality traits they had, it all intensifies as a vampire-love for a person, for instance.
Damon very much straddles the line between human and vampire, and it's clear he wants people to believe that he has no humanity left. He denies it when anyone sees through him, or at the very least looks mildly perturbed at the suggestion. In fact, it seems to disturb even him when he finally acknowledges that he doesn't want to kill everyone anymore. Being a good person really isn't something he believes he's capable of. He has, after all, spent over a century embracing life as a self-serving psychopath (as Elena so succinctly puts it). While he admits to Stefan that his guilt is there if he wants it to be, he also tells Jeremy later that he lived with it switched off for a long time and that it was easier that way. Still, even before he openly acknowledges that he's let himself feel again, something's always lurked beneath the surface: his devotion to Katherine, his increasing willingness to help Elena, his complicated relationship with his brother-even the way he's obviously hurt by betrayal and his unwillingness to extend his trust to anyone out of the belief that they'll just turn on him.
None of this means that Damon secretly has a heart of gold. That he walks such a fine line between human and monster is part of what makes him so dangerous: he is entirely capable of feeling love and betrayal and everything else, and he's equally capable of acting out on those feelings by killing and manipulating anyone he needs or wants to. Stefan isn't wrong when he observes that Damon doesn't get mad, he gets even. Simply put, Damon can be a brat; 145 years walking the earth as one of the most powerful creatures in existence means that he's rarely denied anything. Try to tell him what to do, and he'll either laugh at you or rip your throat out. What he wants, he gets-eventually. Even if the bodies pile up. And when he can't have it, he gets pretty pissed. This side of him isn't a new development-his rivalry with Stefan over Katherine began when he was a human. And really, even as a human, he was willing to help Katherine kill to feed.
Knowing Elena does change this about him somewhat. Damon cares a lot for Elena, more than he'll ever admit, and more than that, he appreciates her in her own right. She's the last person who should've extended her hand to him-he's nearly killed her and her friends on multiple occasions-but she did and it means something to him. Damon doesn't exactly have a lot of people who would consider him worth saving. He originally viewed human beings as objects to be toyed with, and it's not like he's stopped killing people when he has to, but by his own admission, he's found himself wanting to save people, too, all of a sudden. It's a new development, though, so he's still kind of fucked up about it. Truthfully, the closer Damon feels he's getting to his humanity, the more unstable he becomes and the chances of him snapping and falling back to what he knows best (read: killing innocent people) shoot through the roof. Such is the midlife crisis of a vampire. Elena might've allowed him to hesitantly trust someone other than himself, but she's a very, very small circle of one. Possibly two, if you count Stefan, but Stefan's a more complicated issue. In any case, there currently two people Damon would definitely drop everything and risk his life for: Stefan and Elena. The rest of the population is up for debate.
On the subject of Stefan-it deserves its own paragraph. They used to be extremely close until Katherine split them apart. Damon resents his brother greatly and there's nothing false about how much he hates the guy or how much he enjoys fucking with him, but at the same time, he does care about him in some weird way, though any suggestion of such will be flatly met with denial. But given that Damon is stronger than his brother, what with Stefan being on the squirrel diet and all, it's telling that Damon never actually kills him despite multiple threats to do so. He saves his brother on two occasions, and he doesn't hesitate-though part of that is no doubt the perverted sense that no one's allowed to mess with his brother except him ("If anyone's going to kill you, it's going to be me.") Damon doesn't have any friends and humans tend to die; Stefan's the only one who's known him from the start, even before he became a vampire. It counts for something.
These are all deeper issues, though. In general, Damon has a need to keep himself occupied in some way-he doesn't do boredom-enjoys a fun night out, and has no trouble chatting with just about anyone. When he wants to, he can be extremely charming. Plus, he's easy on the eyes and that hardly hurts his case. He's also manipulative to the nth degree and he's not afraid to do what it takes. It's telling that he manages to gain the trust of the very people who are specifically looking for a vampire. When it comes to people's emotions, Damon is far from oblivious to them. There's a reason why he's so good at mindfuck.
If he doesn't care about being nice, he has a razor-sharp tongue that he's not afraid to use and enough bitter cynicism to fill an ocean. He knows how to cut deep and he'll do it on purpose whether because he's pissed or because he doesn't like someone. Even when he's not trying to hurt anyone's feelings, he doesn't hold back on his bluntness. When Elena tells him she found her birth mother, he doesn't hesitate to reply that her birth mother sucks because she abandoned her. As much as Damon keeps up a front, there are moments such as this where he can get a bit transparent if you know what to look for-not a full picture, maybe, but not a complete lie, either.
Predictability doesn't apply to him, either. His mood can flip in an instant; he's one of those people who'll shake your hand and slit your throat within the space of a second. He's not unstable, though, at least not in the sense that his temper will overwhelm self-preservation. Damon only seems like the impulsive type to people who don't realize how much he can get away with. He doesn't have to stop and consider the consequences of, say, tossing someone off a building because the consequences simply don't apply to him the way they would to mere mortals. He is, however, perfectly aware of what the consequences that do apply to him are: he stops drinking human blood and killing people when he realizes the townspeople are on his tail, for example. With the exception of a few notable instances, Damon does everything with cold calculation. It's rarely obvious as to when he's lost his temper; by the time anyone's realized they've gotten on his bad side, they're already dead.
In the end, this brief exchange probably says more about Damon than anything else could:
Damon: My actions, what I do, it's not your fault. I own them. You are not allowed to feel my guilt.
Stefan: Do you feel guilt?
Damon: If I want to, it's there.
HISTORY:
We're never told when Damon was born or anything about his life prior to his meeting Katherine. A Salvatore, he is of Italian descent. We know that he deserted the Confederate Army and that for this reason, among others, his father, Giuseppe, disapproved of him, calling him at one point a great disappointment. Damon was best friends with his brother, Stefan, who came to Damon's defence against their father on at least one occasion that we know of.
Sometime around 1864, a girl named Katherine Pierce arrives in the small town of Mystic Falls, Virginia. Although they don't realize it at first, she is a vampire. Both brothers fall for her and she toys with them both, never quite choosing one or the other. This is where the rivalry starts to take root. While Stefan is under her compulsion, Damon later claims (and Katherine's handmaiden confirms) that he never was and that what they had was real. A flashback shows him actively participating in a hunt where she shows him "how it's done." She has him kiss her with blood still on her lips, giving Damon his first taste.
Unfortunately, the townspeople-"The Founders," they are later called, a small circle that included Giuseppe-aren't exactly oblivious to the presence of vampires. They begin to find ways to trap and kill them. Aware of this, Stefan suggests that they could talk to their father in hopes that Katherine can be spared, but Damon swears him to secrecy. Stefan later goes to see Giuseppe and questions whether all vampires are really so bad, thereby tipping their father off. Giuseppe has Stefan ingest vervain-a drug-like plant to vampires-and when Katherine feeds on him, she collapses and is taken away along with the others. They try to break her out, but are both shot instead.
Emily Bennett-a powerful witch and Katherine's handmaiden-explains to Stefan after he wakes up that Katherine had given each brother a special ring, and that they had both been drinking Katherine's blood for weeks (vampire blood being what needs to be in your system at the time of death for a transformation to begin); Damon, for his part, partook in this drinking willingly with no compulsion required. Damon happened to wake up earlier during the night. He tells his brother that he watched them take Katherine into the church with the other vampires and set fire to it. He's clearly devastated by her death, especially having been witness to it. What he doesn't know is that Emily has succeeded in protecting Katherine, as per Damon's request.
As it turns out, on that last night, Damon had gone to Emily, asking her to protect Katherine when he realized that the townspeople were coming after all the vampires, that he would pay any price for it. In exchange for protecting Emily's lineage, Emily sealed Katherine-along with the other twenty-six vampires-inside a tomb underneath the church, harnessing power from a passing comet into a crystal to work the spell. The church went up in flames, but no one was actually burned.
Emily keeps this from both brothers initially (and Stefan doesn't actually find out until a century and a half later), hoping that they wouldn't complete the transformation if they believed her dead. This is pretty close to what happens. Damon's entire reason for wanting to turn was because of Katherine; without her, his reason to do so is gone. Stefan, however, hops on the human blood wagon a bit quicker. After he changes, he brings back a girl for Damon and eventually gets Damon to drink from her. Stefan insists that they can explore eternity together, but Damon promises he'll make it an eternity of misery.
The next 145 years are largely untold. Two things are clear: Damon hounds Stefan, making good on his promise, and he devotes almost everything he does into freeing Katherine. He needs the crystal and the comet to return in order to reverse the spell and break the seal. In 1989, he has a fling with a witch named Bree. She helps him attempt to get into the tomb, but it fails. In 2007, Damon is approached by a woman named Isobel who asks him to turn her which he agrees to do. Her husband, Alaric Saltzman, catches him feeding on her, but believes-or convinces himself, anyway-that she was simply killed, not turned.
The story picks up when Damon returns to his home in Mystic Falls. No one knows why he's back, but it all has to do with Katherine: the comet has returned which means he has a chance to open the tomb. At first, though, it seems as if he's just there to fuck with Stefan, often by going through his brother's Katherine-lookalike (she's a damn near clone of Katherine) girlfriend, Elena Gilbert. In the process, however, he does start to get to know Elena a bit-and she grows on him eventually. This doesn't mean he ceases to mess with Stefan or her. When Stefan tells him he believes Damon has some humanity left, Damon promptly kills the school's football coach to prove otherwise. He attacks a girl named Vicki and toys with the situation, compelling her to believe that Stefan was the one who did it-so that Stefan would have to drink human blood if he wanted to be strong enough to undo it, though when Stefan refuses, Damon decides to wipe Vicki's memories, anyway.
He also takes Caroline as his girlfriend. She sleeps with him the first time willingly, but everything after that is compulsion-she lets him feed on her and he uses her to gain access to the house where he hid Katherine's crystal once upon a time. Elena discovers the bite marks on Caroline and confronts Damon about it. Having no more use for Caroline, anyway, Damon decides to drain her dry, but Stefan's spiked her blood with vervain. He locks Damon in the basement with every intention of keeping him there for the next fifty years. It doesn't even last a week-Damon remains strong enough to compel Caroline from miles away to come free him. Zach-a human Salvatore descendant who lives in the boarding house-tries to stop Damon from escaping and gets his neck snapped for the trouble. Damon chases Caroline until she flees into the sunlight where he can't follow without his sunlight-protection ring.
When night falls, Damon slaughters an entire group of kids getting high in the woods. He calls Stefan to demand his ring back while he burns the bodies, threatening to go after Elena if he doesn't get what he wants. After he hangs up, he realizes one of the victims-Vicki-is alive. Seemingly on a whim, he takes her home. She's no fun half-dead, so he feeds her his blood to heal the bite, compels her to believe that she loves the blood, and they proceed to dance all the way into Stefan's room where they trash it. Vicki eventually confesses all of her insecurities to Damon. While his reaction is blunt ("you are so damaged"), there's a sense of something close to pity in there. Somewhere. He finally declares that death is the only solution and kills her. With his blood still in her system, she begins to turn.
Meanwhile, the Founder's Council-a small group of people in on the vampire situation-decide to hunt down the vampire they believe to be in town. One of the group members, Logan Fell, takes down Stefan with a wooden bullet, but Damon drains him before Stefan gets staked. Damon demands his ring back and Stefan obliges.
What happens to Vicki isn't important here; the gist of it is that she loses control of her bloodlust and is killed after she tries to eat her boyfriend, Jeremy (Elena's brother). Damon materializes to dispose of the body and Elena confronts him about what he did to Vicki. He remains unflinchingly indifferent; if anything, Elena's persistence only serves to make him colder. It isn't until Elena leaves that Damon seems to regard Vicki with something akin to regret. It's pretty unlikely he feels any Stefan-style guilt; he probably just kind of thinks it's too bad she ended up dead so quick. Still, either some sense of responsibility lurks under there or he at least feels enough for Elena to want to do something for her, or possibly a bit of both-Damon sure as hell won't acknowledge it if there's any truth to either of that-but in any case, he offers to wipe Jeremy's memories of Vicki and to take away his suffering since Stefan isn't powerful enough to make sure the memory wipe is permanent.
Now aware that there are people in town looking for a vampire, Damon worms his way into the confidences of the Council, first by supplying vervain. When Stefan's best vampire friend, Lexi, shows up for a visit, it provides the perfect opportunity. Damon sets her up so that it looks as if she were the vampire causing the deaths, then kills her in front of the sheriff-one of the council members. He doesn't realize Stefan is watching, though it probably wouldn't stop him if he had. It does succeed in throwing them off the vampire hunting trail. For the time being, anyway.
Damon doesn't necessarily feel bad about killing Lexi, but he does feel bad about killing his brother's closest friend in that "I'm sorry I ate all of your birthday cake" kind of way so he tries to make nice by bringing coffee and promising not to kill anyone...for a week. Stefan, deciding to try and pry (again) into the reason why Damon is even in town, begins to buddy up with his brother. He has a drink with Damon, invites him to a game of darts and then football, a game Damon originally taught Stefan to play. Damon knows perfectly well Stefan is up to something, but indulges nevertheless until the end of the night. He finally tells Stefan the reason why he's here: Katherine is alive and he knows how to get her back using the crystal and the comet. Damon believes that he was the last one to see Katherine before everything one down that night, but Stefan says that he was actually the last one and implies that they were busy getting it on which...hardly helps Damon's mood.
Of course, since Caroline was holding the crystal shortly before Damon roofied on her blood and then subsequently gave it to Bonnie (Emily's descendant and a witch) Damon doesn't have the crystal at the moment. He tries several times to chase it down, but Bonnie won't give it to him and because of the deal he made with Emily, he can't actually hurt Bonnie.
Anyway, the crystal thing is a moot point because before Damon can get the crystal back from Bonnie, Emily possesses her. The problem is that it isn't just Katherine sealed in-it's all the vampires from 1864. Damon's willing to let them out to get revenge on the town, but he's obviously the only one. Emily destroys the crystal. Damon is understandably very upset and takes a good bite out of Bonnie, though she doesn't die.
With no more crystal, there's no reason for Damon to stay. Stefan asks where he'll go, and Damon notes he'll visit some friends to which Stefan replies he has no friends and Damon concedes the truth of it. He invites Stefan to come along with him; he's not serious, of course, in the sense that he thinks Stefan will actually agree, but it's not the first time he tries to get Stefan on his side. When he dicks with Stefan, it isn't always just arbitrary-he's often trying to get Stefan to acknowledge himself as a vampire and to drink human blood like normal vampires are supposed to do. It's true that it probably pisses him off that Stefan all self-righteous about the no human blood thing when Damon knows firsthand just how much Stefan loved it at first, but there's something deeper to it, too.
But then Logan shows up as a surprise vampire, leaving a body behind. He's killed within the episode, so he's only important in that he's the reason Damon doesn't leave and that he tells Damon that there's another way to get into the tomb. We get some new vampires in town who go after Elena and all of them soon discover that they need John Gilbert's journal to retrieve Emily's grimoire which contains how to reverse the spell (and a witch to do the magic, a.k.a. Bonnie).
Before this, though, Damon takes Elena on a short road trip after she flips her car. He basically just drives her to Atlanta after she passes out and convinces her to spend the day with him. He's really there to talk to Bree about the opening of the tomb, but they actually do have a nice time together until Lexi's vampire boyfriend shows up and tries to set him on fire. Elena pleads for his life and Damon is spared. It's always been clear from the start that Damon likes Elena as a person, but it's when she saves his life despite everything he's done that something probably begins to slowly change.
Katherine's still first and foremost on his mind, however. Not wanting the other vampires to be released, Stefan and Elena pretend to agree to help Damon get what he wants. Damon is suspicious, but Elena convinces him that Stefan is trustworthy. When Damon catches them digging up the grimoire without telling him, he's clearly hurt, not by Stefan but by Elena, because he'd expected different from her. He takes her hostage and forces his blood on her, threatening to turn her unless Stefan gives him the spellbook which Stefan of course hands over.
After Elena and Bonnie are kidnapped by other vampires who want into the tomb (Stefan rescues them, naturally), it becomes apparent that until Damon gets Katherine back, things aren't going to get better. Elena goes to try and convince him that they're willing to work with him for real this time. She takes off her necklace of vervain and tells him to compel the truth out of her, but Damon doesn't go that far. The gesture is enough. When she asks him why he hadn't compelled her in Atlanta, either, he tells her that it was because he wanted it to be real.
They manage to break open the tomb, but Katherine isn't even in there. Turns out, she escaped that very night and has been hanging around without bothering to tell Damon even though she knew perfectly well where he was. Crushed and left with no purpose ("nothing is important"), Damon spends the next little while self-medicating with booze and the blood of sorority girls, though he doesn't kill anyone. Another woman in his past comes up, though-Isobel, the woman he turned is two things: Elena's birth mother and the wife of a man named Alaric, a history teacher by day/vampire hunter by night. Alaric recognizes Damon, of course, and he pieces together what the connection is between Isobel and Alaric, though he doesn't know that she's also Elena's mother. He taunts Alaric in public about it. That night, Alaric breaks into his house, ready to stake him. Damon casually bats him around as he informs Alaric that he turned Isobel when she came to him asking to be made a vampire and that she obviously wasn't happy with her husband. And then he stabs Alaric with his own stake and watches him die.
Except Alaric doesn't actually die because he has a magic ring. He doesn't try to kill Damon again and they actually start to form an uneasy alliance. When Stefan is kidnapped by the vampires who escaped from the opened tomb, Damon and Elena both seek his help to launch a rescue mission. Damon's busy holding off the vampires, so he doesn't see Stefan drink Elena's blood, but it's not too hard to figure out Stefan's hooked when he spots his brother sucking down human blood from the blood bank like a junkie. (SOUND FAMILIAR? IT SHOULD.) Stefan goes a bit crazy, attacks a couple people, and then they lock him up to get the human blood out of his system. Damon refuses to admit that he cares about Stefan and maintains that he's only doing this because he doesn't need Stefan killing a bunch of people when the Founder's Council is still on their tail about vampires. After Stefan recovers, he thanks Damon, but Damon brushes him off. When Stefan tries to apologize about the past, Damon tells him that he doesn't hate Stefan because Stefan forced him to turn, but because Katherine was only supposed to turn Damon and Damon alone. Instead, she turned them both.
The hunt for the remaining vampires culminates during a big celebration in the town. There's a device that creates a high-frequency sound only vampires can hear which causes them extreme pain. Bonnie was supposed to have removed the spell on it, rendering it useless, but she lied about doing so. When it's switched on, pretty much all the vampires nearby-including Damon-drop like flies. They're quickly injected with vervain, then dumped in a basement that's set on fire. Stefan pulls Damon out after Bonnie uses her powers to suppress the fire.
ABILITIES:
• Physical: Speed/strength/so forth is slightly above human, but not by much. Healing is average.
• Senses: Can overhear whispered conversations if they occur in-thread, but not outside of that. Has night vision equal to a human with a flashlight. Can identify blood in the near vicinity.
• Compulsion: Effective once per DS/NS for a single physical command. He can no longer get inside someone's head to force dreams/his will/etc on them. Whether or not it works is completely dependent on the player. You'll be contacted beforehand if it ever occurs. If he does not keep up a steady diet of human blood, it will slowly cease to function.
• Being impaled with anything wood will remain particularly painful.
• He cannot enter any patient room without an express invitation from at least one occupant, unless the room is an unoccupied one.
• If his ring is ever removed, he will burn in the sun.