PLAYER NAME: kat
CONTACT: talldarkandgay
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: tdm thread here!

CHARACTER: Spike
CANON: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel
CANON POINT: Post-Angel S5

BACKGROUND: comprehensive wiki on history here

ABILITIES | POWERS: Vampires in the universe of Buffy hold true to these details:

UNDEAD PHSYIOLOGY: For all intents and purposes, Spike appears human ( albeit pale as all get out ) and can more or less pass as one. However, he doesn't need to breathe. The lungs are still there and he could draw breath if he wanted, but it's not a necessity. He can eat human food. He's actually one of the few vampires in the series that mentions enjoying a thing or two, but overconsuming will make vampires ill as they have no need for regular food. The three things that undoubtedly out him as a vampire are the lack of reflection and/or the ability to show up in photographs, bursting into ( gradual ) flames in direct* sunlight, and the transformation into his "game face", which is an actual shift in appearance to have his fangs accessible.

He does have perks like enhanced strength, speed, and senses to make him more of a predator but the level of how much stronger depends on regular access to blood. I don't want fights to be too easy for him, so I'll be using discretion on whether he's going to get tossed around like a rag doll or finds that he actually feels top notch. ( And top notch here in game might still be less than in his home world. )

*The show plays fast and loose with the rules of sunlight. He can be in a bright room and be perfectly fine as long as the light isn't filtering directly upon his skin. This could very well have to do with being filmed in the 90s/00s BUT you know, we're going with it.

He's also a skilled fighter who was trained by the worst vampires of the century and has killed two vampire slayers to date. Spike may be reformed now but delighting in the thrill of battle is something that's been a part of him for a long time.

PERSONALITY:

On the surface level, Spike is someone that breezes his way into a room or a dire conversation and pokes light of the very serious faces and concerns around him. He's comedic effect before he's anything else. It's something he does both as a comfort to the people he cares for and a disarming technique. People aren't good for anything when they're that high-strung, not in a fight and not in developing a strategy.

Then again, even before he was a vampire, he was a man who approached things differently, and was ostracized by his community for it.

He took to vampirism with wanton destruction, having no respect for rules or for hiding that vampires were real monsters in the night. Despite the advisement from his elders, destroying villages or going after someone in a dark alley wasn't enough of a challenge for Spike. He wanted more. When he learned what a vampire slayer was, he made that a core mission of his: finding a Slayer and killing her — nothing like it on the planet. Something that was inherently opposite of what a vampire was supposed to do when they heard whispers of a Slayer, they were supposed to go running in the opposite direction.

But Spike is someone that gets a thrill out of a fight. He calls it dancing. He can appreciate the fluidity of trading blows like stanzas in a poem. It isn't just mindless violence, it's designed with a purpose. He, himself, has notably said that he doesn't want the world to end rather that it's something evil people say to be coined as evil. He happens to like the world and most of the things within it.

One of his most notable traits is loyalty and by extension, his capacity to love. In the Buffyverse, vampires are said to be soulless, murderous creatures and for a time, Spike is both. But this labeling is supposed to imply the inability to feel emotions or anything outside of hunger. He stayed with his sire, Drusilla, for well over a decade ( on again, off again ) chasing her all over the continents, and loving her in spite of her flaws and mental instability. He took care of her when she was unwell and needed nursing back to health. It's an element that stays true to his character long after Drusilla and he part.

Spike says it himself, applies the descriptor that he's, "love's bitch" essentially. When he stopped hanging on Drusilla's every word, it was an obsession with Buffy that bloomed. Unhealthy as it may have been at times, there were good things he did for her. Often times, Spike showed up for her when everyone else turned away. His loyalty extended to Buffy's family and by extension, her friends. He allowed himself to be tortured without giving up information before he had a soul in his chest to speak of. The whole reason he pursued the demon trails and fought for his soul in the first place was because he thought it was what Buffy deserved; he thought it would make her love him.

But Spike has reached a place where he died, and came back, and he's finally doing good things for the right reasons (i.e. without the influence of the woman he loves bossing him around) and he hasn't told her himself that he's returned from the dead after his alleged sacrifice. He is a man with many failings and one of them is that he's scared of putting himself out there on display to be picked apart again, as he had as a human ( and for her many times ), and to be rejected when on paper he's done everything right. His other misgivings include jealousy, which was an additional and cheap factor in not disrupting Buffy’s life. He thought she was dating someone else, not knowing it was a decoy put in place and not actually her. He’d still fought with her other ex, Angel, for the course of an episode over which one of them was going to shoot their shot first.

There's also the matter of finding himself and figuring where he fits in the grand scheme of things. When he retrieved his soul and returned to Sunnydale, there was so much going on at the time ( being manipulated by the First Evil, an influx of potential slayers they were housing and trying to protect, all the drama under one roof ) that Spike hadn’t been able to stop and ask himself what sort of man he wanted to be. He knew that Buffy believed in him because she said as much, despite every reason she shouldn’t have, and picked him to be her champion in the final battle of the series. But, he hadn’t believed in himself then. He hadn’t earned it.

Spike stayed in Los Angeles for the one friend he made that fought for him as much as the key components in the coming apocalypse. If nothing else, he can say he is a man that sees things through with the same human passion he’s always had.

SAMPLE: TDM threads here, but happy to write something else up if need be!

INVENTORY:
— one outfit, black everything ( crew neck shirt, jeans, combat boots, leather duster )
— a metal lighter
— one flask
— a single pack of cigarettes

NOTES: Per the mods suggestion on the TDM, I'll have him be using the pendant to siphon energy from people for resistance to the sun but that might be wonky for the hell of it, for challenges' sake. It'll be on a case-by-case basis! Other than that, he will be bundling up and relying on the kindness of others and probably groveling in some cases. As for the feeding, again, he's going to have to strike up arrangements with either NPCs or player characters. I'm amicable to both. I think both of these "setbacks" actually open doors to rather interesting and vulnerable CR. I'm open to the struggle of establishing these connections in game.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot-light? I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew right out the gate.