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Practicing for Contest Prompts

Customize me, Baby!
Curio Name:
Vladamir (Vlad)
Curio:
Vampire Potion
Guardian:
Sloane Domnall

Item Stage:
Drawn, please? I think the acquiring RP would be fun around this time of year. :3
Starting Stage:
Child

Gender:
Male
Hair:
Black, short and silky. He'll grow his hair long and flowing as he ages. Teen-stage Ref
Eyes:
Gray, tapered eyes. He also has perpetual dark rings under his eyes, giving them a hollow appearance even as a child.
Skin:
Pale and cold to the touch.

Special Traits:
Extremely good looking, long limbs and fingers (just not disproportionally so), nails are semi-translucent and more like short claws, vampire fangs, slightly pointed ears

Clothing Style:
Vlad will always have a fine taste in clothes without looking frilly or flashy. Lots of rich fabrics (silk and black leather come to mind) in warm and seductive colors with a very classic without being old fashioned style. One of these days he'll find himself a nice trench coat or duster to be all dark and brooding in.

Personality:
At his heart, Vlad craves company and will desire to start a clan or coven as he grows. However, he's seclusive in the way that he doesn't want a lot of people around him all the time, so it creates a small issue. He's got a strange sense of humor and finds the most morbid things in life funny; Vlad will just randomly chuckle at the most inappropriate times. Age helps a lot, and as he grows he'll grow more suave and seductive.

Potential Powers/Skills:
As a kid, Vlad can't do much. He'll have a really intense sense of hearing and smell and a pretty damn good grip. As he ages, he'll just end up more and more like a vampire: super strength and speed (max at adult: able to overturn a medium sized car and run 80mph after a full feeding), heals quickly (except for fire, explained later), and his body ages slower than other Curios so he always looks young and handsome.

However, for every positive of vampirism, Vlad suffers the consequences. He has to drink blood in order to survive or use his powers, and eating anything else makes him physically ill. Without blood, his powers stop working and after a few days his body starts to shut down. When he's burned by fire, it heals at a "normal human rate", which is painfully slow by his standards. Direct sunlight doesn't make him instantly burst into flames, but prolonged exposure will burn his skin and he starts to smoke. Luckily, he's mostly nocturnal and being awake during the day leave him feeling groggy. While water (holy or otherwise) doesn't affect him, he's still afraid of it - bath time is hell. He's also terrified of fire for obvious reasons.

Prompt Response:
Prompt 3 - Instead of going out trick-or-treating, Vladimir chooses to stay home and help his father, Sloane, had out candies on Halloween.

How does that song go, “It’s Not Easy Being Green”?

Vladimir shifted the candy bowl in his hands and watched as a group of children dashed away from the front door of his house, laughing and already talking about trading candies once they got home. The teenager wished he could have candy, specifically chewy, red gummy fish, or maybe a smooth, rich caramel. Something as simple as a lollipop would have been nice. However, normal food -- Vlad had long ago taken to calling it human food, since blood was his only diet and thus his “normal” food -- of any type sent his entire body into a violent, ugly protest.

That didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy the taste of sweet things. Any human food, really; if he put some thought into the process, then he could experience food more strongly than most humans could even imagine. Perhaps this was why he wanted so badly to just sit down and go through the whole bowl of Halloween treats. He’d start with the taffies (which he liked, but they tended to get stuck behind his fangs), and work his way to the king of all candies: chocolate.

Vlad couldn’t remember the last time he’d savored a piece of chocolate. He couldn’t even begin to describe the euphoric feeling of biting into a piece - there weren’t enough words in any language, mortal or otherwise, to explain how momentous it was. Even thinking about it now, he swore he felt drool pooling at the corner of his lips and out of pure habit he wiped his mouth against the back of his hand, trying to get rid of the thoughts. Those damn kids didn’t know how lucky they were.

Shaking his head to disperse his wants, Vladimir sighed and turned back into the house, shutting the door behind him. The black and orange bowl was deposited on the long table just inside the foyer, fitting right in with the spider-web table cloth and spooky, “blood dripping” candles that decorated it. He peeked into a few rooms, checking to see if his father had finished getting into his costume yet. With Sloane nowhere to be found, the young vampiric man settled against that same long table, waiting for the next troupe of kiddies to come rushing up the porch steps.

Resting his rear on the edge of the table, he moved to put his hands onto the edge. It was a relaxed, comfortable position for him, as he’d always believed that his arms were a little too long. Even without anyone around, he hated feeling like they looked gangly and limp as his sides. Here, however, things began to get a little complicated. As he brought the heel of his palm down, he caught the rim of the bowl and sent it and the contents flipping forward. A crinkling shower of wrappers flew onto the floor, followed shortly by the plastic bang as the bowl landed and wobbled about for a bit before things were silent again.

“Everything okay down there?” Sloane called from upstairs, and Vlad could hear him stepping about.

“Yeah, I just dropped the candy bowl,” the teen called back, sighing again as he bent down to start cleaning up the mess. “Dammit,” he cursed softly, scooping up the candy.

Like a hidden gem, there it was under a small bag of Skittles, a wonderful bite-sized bar of chocolate. Perhaps boring to some with just a brown and silver wrapper, Vladimir kneeled on the ground fixated by the object. It looked so small compared to some of the other candy he’d seen in shops or even experienced himself. In his mind, he wondered, how could it be that such a tiny piece of food could wreak such havoc on his system?

Picking up the bar and sitting back on his legs, Vlad turned it around for inspection. The ingredient list, the nutritional value, manufacturer’s trademarks -- all of these little non-threatening words didn’t really make sense to him. Well, that wasn’t true. While he didn’t know or care what calories were, he did know that everything on that ingredient list was not of the blood-variety, and thus would make him ill should he even take a lick of this wonderful, intoxicating food.

But it was so good, and Sloane didn’t understand! Sure, Vlad loved blood, the subtleties of flavor between that of an older man, a young woman, or someone who’d recently drank alcohol which often left him feeling a bit buzzed. These were the things that drew every sentient being to food for something more than just nourishment. There was nothing, however, that could even hold a candle to the wonderful complexity of human food, of chocolate.

What if someone were to give Sloane a fresh piece of steak, Vlad thought suddenly, prepared just the way he loved, and only after he’d consumed it and was spewing his guts into the toilet thought to mention the horrible side effects of eating something he enjoyed so much? Then, to add insult to injury, revealed that there was no solution, that his body was unable to handle such “rich food”, and that he’d never be able to enjoy it without suffering the same results? The thought made Vlad’s non-beating heart hurt. If he had the power to do it, he would have made himself cry. It just wasn’t fair.

“Just one bite,” Vlad muttered to himself, glancing over his shoulder and listening carefully as he started to peal apart the wrapper.

He couldn’t risk Sloane seeing him; his father had laid down the law many years ago about Vlad not eating human food. Sure, it was for Vlad’s own good because it did make him so very, very sick. Yet, it was just a tiny piece! He wasn’t about to eat the whole bowl, or even an entire bar! He just wanted one, small bite…half a bite, even.

The candy was cool in his hands, kept from melting by his lack of body temperature. He brought it under his nose, inhaling…and whimpered. So delicious, better than he had remembered. His mouth truly watering this time, he was just about to bite…down…

“What do you think you’re doing?” Shrieked Sloane as he came downstairs to find his son about to break a cardinal rule.

Well, it would have been a shriek, but since Sloane’s costume this year had been the Zombie 2k8 Potion in order to become, well a zombie, it was much more gurgled…but still, Vlad knew he’d been caught.

“Oh, come on, Dad,” he groaned, shoulders slumping as he glanced back at his father. “It’s just one piece! I haven’t eaten human food in forever, and it’s fricken Halloween!” The vampire shifted some on his knees, looking up pleadingly as a very gruesome zombie-person finished tromping down the steps and moved towards him. “How bad can this one little bite make me feel?”

“I don’t care how big of a bite it is, or what time of year it is,” Sloane said, his voice frustrated. Again, it was garbled, almost unintelligible…but what kind of super-natural son would Vlad be if he didn’t understand his own father? “You know you’re not allowed to eat normal food.”

“Human food, Dad…blood is normal food to me,” Vladimir corrected Sloane for perhaps the millionth time since he was twelve. “You just don’t understand how much I miss this stuff,” he sighed, knowing he was beaten as he looked wistfully at the chocolate, slipping it back into the wrapper before setting the whole thing on the table above him.


Sloane watched as Vladimir went back to cleaning up the candy, not realizing that the glare on his face wasn’t from the costume. However, at this point, he had nothing to say to the boy. How could Vlad attempt to go against such an important rule? Hadn’t he learned his lesson? Heaving a rumbling sigh, Sloane went back upstairs to put the finishing touches on his costume.

It would be a good time later that Sloane came back downstairs. He wasn’t used to the changes of the Zombie potion and this new body took some adjusting. He made the bottom of the steps just in time to catch Vladimir while he was saying goodbye to another round of children. Amazingly, the teenager looked much happier than earlier, almost as if this whole chocolate business had been forgotten.

“I made a friend,” he chuckled, setting the newly refreshed bowl of candy on the table. “This one kid was dressed up as a vampire and he was so impressed with my ‘costume,’ he gave me a hug.”

Sloane smiled, glad to see his son in such better spirits. “Why not let me take over? You’ve been at this for a while now,” the normally blonde haired man said as he went to stand by the door, peering out the side windows.

“Meh, I don’t mind,” Vladimir replied, leaning against the table near the candy bowl. However, he hovered there for only a second before he gasped, clamping a hang over his mouth and tearing off through the house.

Sloane’s head whipped around as a chair fell over in the kitchen and the man groaned when he heard the tell-tale retching that echoed from the back bathroom. Why wouldn’t Vladimir listen to him? Sloane shook his head, rubbing his strange and partially decaying hands over his face before he shut off the front porch light. No more trick-or-treaters tonight, or at least not until Vladimir stopped puking and managed to get himself cleaned up.