Red Death

Sleuth Home - Detective Vampiric Smile

Director - Vampiric Crypt

Title:
Battered Shoe
Experience:
22839150
Archetype:
Tough and Smart
Age:
1031 days
Gender:
male
Sleuth Theme:
Secret #1
Last Login:
Aug-21-2010
Account Status:
Active
Subscription Status:
Unsubscribed
 
Community:

Equipment

Fightin Jacks Compact Travel Kit Newsie Mysterious Gentleman Tucker's Burden

Completed Missions

  • Packages Delivered: 16
  • Overdue Books Returned: 22
  • Secret Plans Revealed: 31
  • Artifacts Unearthed: 17
  • Journal Pages Found: 3
  • Brass Rings Won: 0

Detective Biography

I was born in Athens. That in itself is nothing remarkable you might say, except that it was over 2000 years ago.

If you choose to believe my tale I was born in the Golden age of Pericles, a child of the Athenian aristocracy. By the time I was 20 I had already graduated from the Naval Academy and was an officer fighting in the first Peloponnesian War.

I was given a small force of some 50 men, charged with raiding the coast. With the confidence - the brash arrogance - of youth, with the might of Athens at my back, what harm could befall me?

What harm indeed!

It was on one of these raids that we were ambushed by the Spartans. My men fell about me like sheaths of wheat at the harvest. And when my time came; as my life bled out before me, as I soiled myself in fear, as I cried for my mother... my executioner's hand was stayed.

Naked, beaten, more dead than alive, I was brought to the Spartan Captain Fileas. Pale, like the waxing moon, he licked his lips as I was tied to his tent pole. I remembered the stories, of the Spartans taste for sins of the flesh, and shuddered. His face inches from mine, his breath hot and stale, I prepared myself for what I thought must surely be a fate worse than death.

How wrong I was.

"For Sparta", Fileas whispered, as he sunk his teeth into my neck, as he possessed me in a way that penetrated my soul far deeper than any carnal act I could have imagined.

And when he was done with me? I was tossed onto the carrion heap, surrendered to the rats and crows, left in the darkness to slake my already over-whelming Thirst on the still-warm corpses of my comrades.

Years passed, but the Thirst drove me on. Anger, Jealousy, and even Self-Pity, became the morsels I fed myself after I had Drank. And when I had become something so dank and putrid that even Fileas would have turned and fled...

Guilt!

After all those years of feeding; all those years of believing all that was left was depravity...

Guilt!

So I sought an Answer.

After a time, I found a Holy Man, no more pleased to see me than I was to beg for his help, but beg I did, and for whatever reason, he listened.

"On the darkest of nights we may yet find a candle flickering in the distance." With great restraint I stopped myself from snapping his neck where he sat. "It may not illuminate our path, but it will guide us on the way home. For you child..." and he looked on me as one who had a right to call me child "the light is all but dimmed, and your way all but lost, unless you remove that darkness which surrounds you." That was all he would say.

And so I have sought to remove the darkness around me ever since. Now I hunt it down for the mangy dog it is; I feed on it as it once fed on me. A Vampire Detective, I chase down the guilty, I stalk evil, I Feed on the corrupt. The Thirst is still with me, perhaps that will always be so, but now when I Drink, occasionally I smile... a Vampiric Smile...

Politics

Order o Socrates:  Poor(-3)
Arcanum Brthrhd:  Neutral(0)
Cosa Nostra:  Poor(-3)
Eastern Triads:  Good(10)
Circle of Light:  Poor(-3)
Green Hand:  Poor(-3)
The Tea Steepers:  Terrible(-60)
Shangri La Tigers:  Great(60)

Contacts

Waitress (New York)
Shoe Maker (New York)
Barber (London)
Concierge (London)
Bartender (Shanghai)
Silk Merchant (Shanghai)
Missionary (Delhi)
Tailor (Delhi)
Baker (Cairo)
Rug Merchant (Cairo)
Postal Clerk (Sleuthetania)
First Mate (Sleuthetania)

Arch Villains

Vivian "Knuckles" Musgrave
Captured

Gilda "the Shadow" von Schneider
Captured

Captain Conrad Malatesta
Captured

Lenore "the Rat" Lancaster
Captured

Shu Fang "the Beetle" Frost
Captured

Books Collected

Secret Adversary
Agatha Christie

The Mysterious Affair at Style
Agatha Christie

The Adventure of the Empty House
Arthur Conan Doyle

A Scandal in Bohemia
Arthur Conan Doyle

The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle

Martin Hewitt, Investigator
Arthur Morrison

The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Edgar Allan Poe

The Mystery of Marie Roget
Edgar Allan Poe

Vox Imperium
Michael Bagen

The Art of War
Sun Tzu

50 Words or Less Contest
Various Authors

Seuss Noir
Various Authors

Mystery Haiku Contest
Various Authors

The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins