xxxxxx▋▋▋▋▋Basic Information ▋▋▋▋▋
Name: Seth "Silver Ghost" Richard Jr.
Age: 21
Eye Color: Ruby Red (Hungry); crimson-rimmed silver otherwise
Hair Color: Gunmetal Gray
Height: ~175cm
Weight: ~62kg
Scars/Tattoos: Two faint puncture scars along his right clavicle strongly suggest a vampire encounter in Seth's recent past. Seth has no obvious tattoos on his body.
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual emotion_rainbow
xxxxxx▋▋▋▋▋Ability Information ▋▋▋▋▋
Abilities
Vampirism: Those afflicted/blessed with the curse/gift of vampirism are capable of healing quickly and shrugging off minor injuries. Enhanced strength, a healthier constitution, superior reflexes, and evasive speeds are among the benefits conferred by vampirism. There is but a cost, however: Those living with vampirism require nutrition from blood products on a regular schedule to avoid starvation, and starvation severely impacts a vampire's capabilities. Exposure to direct sunlight, while not lethal in contrary to societal stereotypes, will hasten the time between required feedings and inhibit a given vampire's healing factors. Finally, there exist varying degrees of susceptibility to argentum (Silver) poisoning should silver implements pierce a vampire's flesh.
xxxxxx▋▋▋▋▋About me~ ▋▋▋▋▋
Race: Vampire (Formerly human)
Personality: Seth's heightened sense of paranoia has carried over into his arrival at Fantaisie City. Originating from his early work with unscrupulous contacts, Seth will have second thoughts before meeting potential contacts in private locations; as such, and only when absolutely necessary, he prefers to meet clients in coffee shops, pubs, and the occasional lounge. During meetings, Seth maintains a strict separation of business and personal concerns.
Once his proverbial shell is breached, though, one will find an amicable, brave, and loyal soul within; should a friend of Seth find themselves in danger, he will go out of his way to rescue them through any means necessary.
Likes:
♡ Tea
♡ Nightly strolls
♡ Computers
♡ Reading
Dislikes:
❦ Alcoholic beverages
❦ The bright fusion reactor in the daytime sky
❦ Law enforcement
❦ Lowballers
Biography: Seth is the sole son of Seth Richard Sr. and Ellen L. Richard, a working class couple who lived in an industrial town across the country. Seth Richard Sr. worked as a steel mill tradesman while Ellen tended to the household as a stay-at-home mother.
The Richards barely earned enough money to keep a roof overhead and food on the table. Beyond these circumstances, Seth had little in the way of material comforts besides reading borrowed books from the town library, which he did on a daily basis. Shortly after he turned six years of age, the Richards moved to a less decrepit house following Ellen's receipt of her inheritance from Seth's late maternal grandfather. It was here that the Richards also purchased a secondhand home computer for their son, who almost immediately looked over the machine with delight. During times when neither of his parents needed to use the computer for reading the news, Seth found himself engrossed in Roguelikes where he learned to enjoy using a command line interface.
In school, Seth's eager interests in computers did not sit well with his peers, however. A regular trio of boys three years Seth's senior made a habit of beating the techie to a bloody pulp. Bystanders would offer little to no help, and Seth found himself fighting back alone with predictable consequences. Slowly, Seth identified the search patterns of his nemeses and learned to dodge their paths for at least until the current academic year ended. Seth's situation improved the most, however, when he finally met two peers with similar aptitudes and founded a computer science club in his sixth year: Though the club sponsor's supervision was next to minimal, the trio had a dedicated space to themselves where they could explore the basics of scripting, computer networking, and systems maintenance.
Seth's school life showed positive signs of improvement, but his home life continued to worsen; prior to one brutal winter, Seth Richard Sr. lost his job at the steel mill due to a local recession, and the family found themselves rationing heat. Ellen Richard caught pneumonia, and the associate medical fees put the household in yet another financial bind. At least once a week for three months, Seth found himself going to bed, hungry, after eating what little the family of three could afford. To try and secure his own nutrition, Seth tried part-time work at a local bookstore, but was denied employment based on his young age. It should come as no surprise then that Seth turned to what he knew most to survive: Information (In)security. At first, sticky notes containing passwords and other credentials went missing from teachers' desks. Secretly, Seth would write offers to upperclassmen with sample username-password combinations, asking for financial compensation in exchange for an easy method to change one's monthly grades and possibly purge disciplinary records. After a teacher caught a student in the act of altering their gradebook, the school cracked down on the security breach, forcing Seth to cease his thefts for a month. After that month, though, Seth had found a new revenue stream: From a computer in the school, he could remote into a payroll server after he discovered its unchanged default credentials, from which he could bounce his activities to find other vulnerable relays, orchestrate attacks, and ultimately profit on proprietary information he stole.
Seth kept his antics secret from his parents, often lying to them that he was working a job on the other side of town to justify why he spent hours outside of the home. In reality, by his sophomore year of high school, Seth would spend weeks if not months surveying unencrypted network traffic passing through compromised routers, collecting credit card information leading to small banks or other financial institutions, and resell the captured information dumps to illicit data dumps on dark net forums. After Seth posted an image of a gray specter in addition to a typical data dump, an anonymous comment jokingly suggested calling the profiteer "Silver Ghost," named after a fictional antagonist who would haunt houses and pilfer them of their valuables. The nickname caught on to Seth's indifference, and the teenager played along with it; the Silver Ghost became something of a meme among Seth's clientele, and it was there to stay. To stay under law enforcement radar, the Silver Ghost converted only a fraction of what he earned to hard cash at cryptocurrency exchanges by carefully structuring his deposits so that they appeared to come from a reasonably part-time source- just enough to put aside to help with rent and maybe save for college, but nothing more.
At age 18, Seth graduated c** laude from his highschool, but could not afford to attend the local university despite saving a sizeable chunk of proceeds from his illicit activities: His mother was recently diagnosed with a malignant breast tumor, and again every resource was needed to keep the family housed while Ellen underwent medical treatment downtown. Instead, Seth opted to purchase his first laptop- a cheap workstation useful for running small servers and scripts, but little more- using part of his savings and gave the rest to his parents. Seth then took on a job- his first job- that went beyond selling bulk collections of personally identifiable information; a client by the name of Lifebroker wanted the Silver Ghost to acquire a specific biotech company's product plans regarding a specific drug. This job took the Silver Ghost nine months to complete with three months to spare, during which the Silver Ghost laundered spare cash from his gains to pay his parents for rent. After the ninth month, it was done: A new drug's trade secrets and patent details were leaked to Lifebroker, who in turn wired Seth's largest payment in the form of cryptocurrency. A year's worth of an InfoSec consultant's salary now sat on a blockchain somewhere, under the command of the Silver Ghost's cryptographic keys.
Rumors of the Silver Ghost's involvement in the biotech security breach did not harm Seth in the slightest even while investigators were trying to navigate the leftovers. Seth regularly masked his device's hardware addresses and utilized throwaway proxies, never using anything more than once besides the bare metal he carried on him. While the authorities were investigating, Seth received another request from a fixer belonging to the Scarlet Rose, an overseas crime organization. By this time, Ellen Richard had been released from the hospital with her cancer in regression, and Seth Richard Sr. had finally wrested control as foreman at his steel mill, but Seth had grown accustomed to the thrill of the hunt: The Scarlet Rose had lost a lieutenant to an altercation with the local police department while an accomplice was now held without bail. Without the accomplice, the Scarlet Rose stood at an impasse in their particular city. The Silver Ghost took up the Scarlet Rose's offer, and a plan was devised to exploit the particular nation's legal system by corrupting the evidence. More specifically, the Silver Ghost was to target a data center hosting backups of the evidence server and remove all mentions of "Reggie," Scarlet Rose's associate. The year-long operation succeeded, and news of Reggie's release hushed through the criminal underworld: The jury had deadlocked over what little evidence remained, and the suspected assailant was acquitted.
The Silver Ghost's involvement in purging the police department's server farm while Scarlet Rose pilfered the forensics lab drew the attention of not only law enforcement, but that of another potential client: The Nightblood Family. One of their own was imprisoned on charges of aggravated assault, and servants of the family identified the prisoner's location. A Nightblood fixer convinced Seth to take the job, and Seth found himself targeting the database of another police department, again. After the breach was successful, Seth did not receive his payment in cryptocurrency, but instead received an invitation to a nightclub frequented by the Family's Matrons... and a map printout pinpointing his residence with his bloodstained photograph warning him not to "skip out" on his reward. Seth's decision to visit the lounge would seal his fate: Despite the risk involved, Seth arrived at the nightclub two hours before midnight with only his laptop in hand and took his seat before who Seth presumed to be the contact mentioned on the map's backside. Seated across from Seth in the VIP section was Felicia Nightblood, a striking woman with hip-length alabaster white hair and a heart-shaped face who spoke authoritatively and with conviction as the two debriefed over cups of tea. A thorough review of the escapee's safety, Jenna Nightblood, would be in order, but the reward would be offered "in mere minutes," Seth recalled. The next pitcher of tea arrived from the VIP lounge's attendant, and Felicia poured Seth another glass, which he accepted and sipped with slight hesitation. When he reached for the porcelain cup a second time, Seth thought he had seen a flash of red in Felicia's eyes when his fingertips suddenly went numb. Try as he could, the paralysis only worsened as he collapsed in his seat, his pupils dilated as they saw Felicia stand while two of what were the Family's thralls joined her rear flanks. "This," Felicia tilted her head, smirking at the defenseless human male before she lunged her razor fangs into his right clavicle, "is your reward. May Darkness reward you for what little service you have done. You shall do much greater things in the Underworld..." Seth's vision faded to black as he heard those last words, his muscles unable to do anything as simple as utter a monosyllabic vocalization. In just ten minutes after arriving, Seth was crumpled up in a comatose state.
A piercing abdominal pang greeted Seth when he finally opened his eyes: He was back in his apartment, though it had changed: The window blinders he normally kept open were replaced with thick blackout curtains taped around the edges to the wall. When he glanced at his alarm clock, he saw that three days had passed since he last remembered the vaguest of details surrounding Felicia's meeting. His gastric muscles spasmed violently again when a sickeningly familiar odor met his nostrils: Blood. He checked his surroundings; perhaps he had left out a raw steak in a hungover stupor? Maybe the a*****e neighbors next door were throwing yet another open barbecue party for the evening? Seth sat upright in bed, blinking profusely. The only active light source in the room came from his alarm clock, but everything appeared as though the full moon lit the room on a clear night. Could it be... ? He let out a sharp scream of terror when he stood and finally saw his reflection in the bedroom mirror: His eyes had turned red, and his tongue brushed against four sharp fangs.
As soon as the Nightblood job had finished, Seth vanished from his home coty, and so did the Silver Ghost. His parents panicked when they tried to visit their son one evening when he did not return their phone calls, only to be informed that their son had been evicted after missing one month’s rent. A missing persons report was filed at the police department, and it has been just over a year since Seth’s disappearance. Simultaneously, online calls for the Silver Ghost’s help from the dark web went unanswered, with some suspecting that the Silver Ghost had died or simply retired without notice. Whatever the case might be, it is unknown whether the police have linked the Silver Ghost’s disappearance from Seth’s.
Strengths
✓ IT Proficiency: As a network cracker and cyber-larcenist, Seth Richard possesses knowledge on computer systems that is on par with experienced systems engineers. Whether it is crafting a script to extract gigabytes of personally identifiable information to a dark web server or sniffing the spectrum for unencrypted RFID signals, Seth is resourceful with a laptop, spectrum analyzer, and Ethernet cable in numerous environments.
✓ Basic Electronics & Electrics: Though not as skilled in this domain as he is in software, Seth's knowledge of electronic principles enables him to crudely wire together peripherals, circuits, and power supplies to improvise a tool for a given task. Less secure keypad locks and other electronic-dependent appliances are also vulnerable to Seth's modest expertise.
✓ Athletics: Assisted by his condition, Seth has honed his parkour and sprinting skills to traverse alleyways, fire escapes, rooftops, and ziplines. In the rare case where a client job requires physical access to the target, Seth is prepared.
✓ Teamwork: Though he is a tough nut to crack, Seth understands the importance of coordinating with supporters lest he wishes to fail a big operation; one moment too late, and the team is unable to progress past a locked section. In time, Seth will continue to develop his teamwork skills and see to it that his future followers are able to do the job they need done.
Weaknesses
✗ Lightweight: Seth's scrawny mass of 62 kilograms on a 175 centimeter body means that Seth cannot absorb nearly as many blows as a sturdier peer of the same height. Should Seth be forced into a combat situation, he will need to rely on speed and "salami tactics..." Simply put, he needs to hit the gym.
✗ Photophobia: Seth must either wear a bulky hooded cloak or simply risk the negative consequences of light exposure due to his condition. Fighting in open daylight puts Seth at a clear disadvantage against mortal opponents. Overcast and rainy environments negate the light's effects to an unspecified degree.
✗ Paranoia: Being on the run for the past several years has put Seth in a tough mental state. Collaborating with fellow comrades will be considerably more difficult until Seth has achieved a certain level of trust with his contacts.
✗ Self-loathing: Despite his talents and success putting on a calculating persona of a hacker, Seth feels inferior to his mortal peers and envies those who are able to earn a stable, sustainable living. Whereas his human peers are able to live openly, Seth finds himself breaking into clinics and hospitals to steal hemoglobin-containing substances which keep him alive; while office workers are splitting the bill of a hearty lunch around noon, Seth lurks in the shadows until the sun sets. It will take time before he accepts his vampiric identity, him having been afflicted a year before his arrival to the City.
xxxxxx▋▋▋▋▋Extra ▋▋▋▋▋
Extra information:
Theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnpqLWBrNw0&t=22
Housing District: 11th Dimension Arcade & E-Cafe
