Willis Haley

Synthetic Vampire

Boston Massachusetts, Beantown, and with the advent of the furrae genome project, Genetown. A city with a great deal of history ranging from the origins of the country to some of the most ambitious civil engineering projects on record. Universities and colleges exist at near saturation levels with some of them bearing the most respected names in research around the world. However, it is home to much more than all but an elite handful of people know. The Big Dig was one of the largest civil projects known. It spanned thirty years of work, and it was one of the most over-budget projects, but it wasn't for the reason that is usually attributed to it. No, it was instead the biosafety level four laboratory hidden deep beneath the tunnels where I-90 flows into the heart of the city. Constructed in secret concurrent with the tunnels, the lab was constructed under the supervision of the Department of Defense, and it tapped into Boston's massive source of trained scientists. Specifically, those of great intelligence and flexible morals were selected to handle one of the most dangerous projects every conducted: the deconstruction of the vampire for use in making super soldiers.

Those that laughed at the idea never had the chance to see the singular specimen they kept cryogenically preserved. The best scientific methods met the most obscure occult practices in an effort to discover how the vampire obtains its power. They wanted a soldier as strong and versatile as this monster with greater control over it. They needed it in the event that nuclear war wiped out the regular forces. A vampire without the undead aspects would be perfect for cutting communists and anyone else that stood in America's way, and maybe even a few that didn't.

It would take the arrival of genomics to understand what was present in the vampire that was lacked in all other furrae. Types of tissue only vampires had were discovered to be less dead and simply less natural. They uncovered new proteins, new tissue structures that enhanced strength and durability, but they never discovered what it took to gain powers like mind control and transformation. While they had the means to make a person stronger, they never solved the ultraviolet sensitivity issue. With progress bogging down, considerations for more extreme tests were considered along with scrubbing the projects. Military personnel on site were instructed to contaminate a select number of researchers with various version of the lab's attempts to create a controllable monster. Anything but tissue from the original source was used, but after a year of observation, no additional changes were seen, and no additional progress was made. The lab would be terminated, and while they did not know it, the researchers were considered expendable. A fire would damage the servers, so the ventilation system had been rigged to saturate the atmosphere with nitrogen gas, a means of executing the entire staff in a relative swift and painless way without damaging equipment or risking there being escapees. At least, that was the thought.

Asphyxiation by nitrogen narcosis takes as little as two breaths to start, and low ranking military units, all research staff, and a few support staff met their ends deep beneath Boston. However, that was when a new discovery was made. A small portion of the contaminated personnel rose from the ground after thy should have died. Most of them were unstable, and the transient awareness quickly faded, but there was a singular exception. One of the lab technicians was still alive even in an atmosphere lacking oxygen. The feeling of death creeping in one him activated some form of latent developmental program hidden in the virus he received.

Seeing everyone he knew dead sent him into a rage. With incredible strength, he tore through locked security doors, shattered bulletproof glass, and fought his way to the servers and their backups. He wasn't a full scientist knowing how to understand what was happening to him, but he was one of the few techs that understood how data was handled in the lab. With direct access to the server and a few well places keystrokes, he started a security protocol he was instructed to use in the event of communist invasion that destroyed years of work in seconds, and by chance he wiped out the information on what virus be carried and the details all of the potentially active viruses.

Soldiers arrived as the atmosphere cycled back breathable, but by then the servers were melting down, and the lone technician was scrambling to find a way out of the lab. Some of the bulkheads were still too much for even his newfound strength to breach, and with the security cameras still functional, they know where he was. Caught in what was supposed to be an emergency escape tunnel, he found himself staring down twenty hardened soldiers. However, they did not immediately open fire.

"Easy there, my boy," a voice came through on a soldier's radio. "Do you realize what you are? Do you realize what you have accomplished? With your help, we could erase communism from the planet. We could end fruitless wars, put an end to terrorism. This is only the beginning! Come along now, you have so much more to do."

"Are you fucking kidding me!? You only know it worked because everyone by me is dead. Go fuck yourself!"

What transpired next is not hard to imagine. Dead or alive was fine as long as they retrieved the specimen, so the soldiers were ordered to open fire. Unfortunately, they did not realize there was a third option that was neither live no dead. After a five second burst of fire, the technician had a very heavily perforated lab coat and clothes, but he was still standing. Weapon fire resumed in a far more panicked spray as the enhanced technician rush the troops with newly developed speed, and with instinct guiding new reflexes, he laid low every soldier without using a single shot from one of their guns. "I will find you, and I will erase you." Those were the last words on record as the fledgling vampire gathered up explosives from the corpses and started on his way out of the complex. Several more sorties occurred as he tried to leave, and in each case, by weapon or fist, the army watched its best turned to a pulp in a mix of desire and terror. Having successfully jammed the mechanism to prevent the tech from leaving, they felt they had the problem locked down. Then the best and worst happened as he somehow turned into a mist, flowered through the tiny gaps before they could be sealed, and proceeded up swiftly enough that his egress into the freeway tunnel far above could not be stopped.

Getting would be nearly impossible until one realizes that all that was needed of this new species of vampire to escape now was darkness, but at four in the afternoon there was plenty of sun high above him to keep him trapped in the tunnels, so rather that wait for nightfall, the tech slipped onto the underside of a car and reformed as a bat. He wasn't sure how he was doing it, but that he could do it was all that mattered. The young monster escaped into the city proper on the underside of a U-Haul. Well, it did this at first until said truck failed to notice the clearance markings on Storrow Avenue and wedged itself under a bridge. This necessitated a change of vehicle, and in the end, it escaped on a car headed into the suburbs north of the city. It is at that point that his real adventures began.

Specifications

• Name: Willis Alexander Hale
• Designation:Specimen XV-A12B06-R3
• Classification: Synthetic Vampire
• Species: Rakali (water rat)
• Gender: Male
• Eyes: Brown
• Height: 5'10"

Capabilities

Enhanced Strength and Reflexes

While his speed and power are modest compared to an actual vampire, Willis is still much faster than unaugmented furrae. It would be fair to assess his strength at greater than the best Olympic athlete and his reflexes as supernatural such that snatching an arrow from the air would not be a challenge.

Extreme Durability

Willis can endure exceptional damage from non-magical, physical sources that makes him almost invulnerable to bullets and most melee combat.

Enhanced Senses

Willis can see in complete darkness and his sense of hearing goes beyond the range of his base species.

Polymorph

While he is still mastering it, Willis can take the classical shaped of bat, wolf, and mist. He can also directly influence how they manifest such that he can be terrifying or adorable.

Potential for Magic

Willis has had his body infused with dark energy and so he may have the ability to learn spells. At this time, he has no knowledge of magic nor any way to use anthing but instinctive things like polymorph.

Immune to Holy

Willis is disconnected from the past of other vampires, and while he draws energy directly from the necrotic plane, he does not have the connotation of evil about him that other vampires carry. While this means he can't be easily warded out of churches or injure by holy sites, he is not immune to enchanted weapons which can bypass his durability not because of faith by because of opposed energies,

Vulnerabilities

Sunlight and Ultraviolet Light

Willis is less vulnerable to ultraviolet-c and above light, but he is not immune. Under such conditions he will be blinded, he will start to smoke, and if he is left for prolonged periods under such conditions, he will fall apart. Willis can tolerate such light for up to 30 minutes without lasting harm, but he has such a powerful aversion to it that it is unlikely he will show himself in the day at all.

Blood Disconnect

Willis cannot readily consume blood to regenerate himself. He also currently lacks the charming and mind control abilities of a full vampire that would make feeding on a living person viable. This disconnect was one of the engineering feats for the virus he carries. Unfortunately, this is also what weakens him compared to other true vampires. Instead, through some of the occult consultation, Willis vampirizes the spirit directly meaning killing, specially at close range, is how he feeds. This was intended for soldiers on the field, not a lab technician with no formal combat training.

Soul Hunger

While Willis does not drink blood, he does still need living essence. Since his Blood Disconnect forced him to take spirits by way of murder, he has to go out and kill to survive. Depending on how active he has been and how much damage he has taken, he will need to feed on a living person every one to four weeks. He is starting his own small lab to try and find a way around this problem, but for the time being, he has to take lives. He tends to prey on those he thinks look shady. He has been known to sneak into prisons and take prisoners.

Weakened Regeneration

A normal vampire can retreat to its home and regenerate. Willis cannot do this because he has no land of origin and so no soil from that land. His regeneration instead occurs slowly unless he goes out on a killing spree.

Backup attractant

A fail safe was placed in the virus, but it hasn't worked correctly. The original spell was meant to attract the synthetic vampire to a place in order to stop the painful sound only it could hear. Willis instead is driven away from it. This means it could be used to herd him. Under its influence, his abilities are hampered much like as if he was hung over. So far he hasn't been trapped by it nor tracked well enough

Virus Mechanism

A bloodborn agent in the blood of vampires was discovered with the use of genomics, proteomics, and the use of occult lore. They found the need for life essence would be drained from blood int he case of true vampires, but they manages to make the draining function work in a faster, more combat friendly version of being in direct contact with the target. Willis does not need to blood itself but the essence of the living body, and so he can take this in a more inductive manner by anything from strangling someone to punching a hole through their chest.

Not everything can be explained by the blood or the spirit tap. Normally an unholy link to ancient magic is used to sustain the body, and it is usually the shadow of ancient sins such that it is vulnerable to purifying magic such as some unspoiled holy methods still possesses. The rest of the energy comes from a necrotic energy plane that the vampire is normally bound to through ties to the land of its origin, hence the need for soil from their homeland. Synthetics are homeless, so they have no sanctuary to hide in, but they are more mobile. The necrotic connection remains without the obligate sin. They draw on this energy, which can be disrupted by sunlight, continually, and the life force is the consumable essence they need to sustain the connection.