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Name: Bobby Age: 25 Contact: crowders @ plurk Timezone: GMT+1 (BST) Other Character(s): n/a |
Name: Michelangelo "Angelo" Salucci Door: Door pass (Submissive) Canon: Original Canon Point: About a year after killing his brother Age: 31 Appearance: Angelo's just a little above average height at 5'11". He's very reedy, with a narrow waist and wide shoulders, and muscles a little on the wiry side. He keeps his hair long-ish and usually swept back off his face like so, and is mostly clean-shaven except for a moustache, although sometimes he goes a few days without shaving. He has a dark mole on the right side of his face, and a badly healed raised scar on his right cheekbone. History: — World. In Angelo’s world, angels and demons are real and their influence on humans has been storied over the years. Some angels and demons will ‘rub off’ their powers onto humans, either after a particularly strong interaction with one directly, or when a person or family has had a particularly longstanding relationship with an entity of some sort. Powers from demons are more common than those from angels, as demons are more likely to interact with (or even live among) humans. In the case of humans becoming imbued with powers, it’s not that the entity chooses to give them a power, but rather that there’s an unintentional transfer. Demons may try to persuade humans to make deals with them in exchange for the human’s soul, and there are ancient arcane rituals that brave humans can try, to bind a demon to them instead. In this case the demon is marked with a brand of some sort, and is magically compelled to do as the human commands. This is incredibly rare: a lot of humans don’t survive the process because mistakes are easy to make and absolutely lethal. Most bindings of this type end for the demon when a contract is fulfilled or when the human dies; as rare as bindings are, it’s rarer still that a human will actually let a demon go. — Childhood. Angelo is the eldest (and currently only) son of Giovanni “Gio” Salucci, the don of the Salucci crime family, which has a reputation for violence and a history of inter-familial bloodshed. Their main criminal interests are racketeering, gambling, and distribution of illegal drugs and firearms, and their legit front is in restaurants and hotels. The Saluccis have been protected for over two hundred years by a demon named Alastor, who made a deal with one of Angelo’s ancestors before they’d emigrated from Italy to protect the bloodline from outside forces. Over the years, Alastor has saved various Salucci heirs from harm, but due to the terms of the deal, he cannot interfere in quarrels between Saluccis – as such, control of the family has often been fought over, with sons killing fathers and brothers feuding between each other for ultimate power. Angelo was born in Long Island in 1988. He's five years older than his brother Ludovico, of whom he's been intensely jealous since pretty much since the day he was born. After Ludo was born, Angelo began to act out more, bullying his peers and developing an angry streak and a penchant for throwing tantrums that never really left him. Thanks to Alastor’s involvement with his family, Angelo was imbued with reality-warping powers that first manifested just after he’d turned 9. The first thing he ever did with his powers was use them to slam another kid’s head into his desk, breaking his nose. His grandfather Raul, don of the family at the time, was exceedingly fond of Angelo, and Angelo adored him. Raul was one of the few Saluccis who had ascended to power without killing another family member, although he was still ruthless in his own way. He only had one son, Angelo’s father, before his wife died, and he never remarried; he only mellowed out as a paternal figure when his grandson was born, and he and Angelo would spend time together, walking Raul’s beloved Rottweiler, Bella. When Angelo was about 9, Raul was embroiled in a war with a rival family, the Durantes. While walking Bella with Angelo, Raul was almost shot, and the first early peace talks between the Saluccis and the Durantes – which had been set up by Gio – broke down when Raul refused to meet with them because they endangered his grandson. This drew out the war almost a year longer, with many fatalities, and Raul eventually decided that peace was more important to strive for than petty displays of power. This time, peace talks between the two families were going extremely well until, apparently out of nowhere, Raul was shot and killed. Angelo’s father Gio took over as Don, and immediately began an extensive revenge campaign that spared only Gisella Durante, the only daughter, and her youngest brother, who was only 17 at the time. Gisella flew back from Italy where she’d been living for most of her life and claimed responsibility for Raul’s murder on behalf of the rest of her family, begging for clemency for herself and her younger brother. The Durante family disappeared, the Saluccis took over their territory, and Gio cemented his position as a ruthless don in his own right. Raul’s death completely devastated Angelo, and was his first real experience with loss; it shaped his lifelong fear of abandonment by those who promised to stay with him. Shortly after Raul’s death, Angelo told his father about his powers, who immediately began to have Angelo use them to psychologically torture enemies of the family. Angelo would never admit this because he’s never spent enough time considering it to even know, but this deeply traumatised him, and pushed him towards a life of violence as the only means of gaining his father’s praise and attention: the first time he used his powers to torture the truth out of one of his father’s enemies was one of the only times Angelo had ever received true, unfettered praise from his father. — Teenage years. When Angelo was 14 he and his family took a trip to Italy to see the village of Zungoli, where their family came from before they emigrated to America. While there they took a detour to see Pompeii. Angelo was saddled with 9-year-old Ludo when he went to explore on his own. Resentful of Ludo and sick of his whining, Angelo used his powers to terrify Ludo and give him a real reason to be afraid of the plaster moulds of Vesuvius' victims; his father, furious with him, slapped him across the face and cut his cheek with his ring in the process, leaving a scar that Gio refused to have treated properly. Gio also purposefully tugged at the scar, pulling it wider, until Angelo cried. Angelo has had a lifelong aversion to tears ever since, considering them the epitome of weakness. In the aftermath of this incident, Angelo found a solid gold ring in the shape of an ouroboros on the ground, which he picked up and carried with him, and has worn every day since it fit. When Angelo was 18, he met a young man named Valentino in Italy. The two had a whirlwind month-long romance, and Valentino was the first person who ever really loved Angelo. Valentino wanted Angelo to stay with him, and asked him several times to forgo his responsibilities to his family (without knowing the true extent of the Salucci family business) so they could live together, but towards the end of the summer, Angelo left without any explanation, breaking Valentino’s heart. — Early adulthood. The demon Alastor formally introduced himself to Angelo on Angelo’s 20th birthday, and they immediately fell into an intense relationship that has lasted, on-and-off, ever since. Alastor spent a lot of time trying to convince Angelo to agree to a formal deal with Alastor, but Angelo was resistant, insisting that all of his achievements happen on his own merit. Besides that, Alastor has been the only source of uncritical praise in Angelo’s life, constantly reminding him how important and special he is at every turn; Alastor constantly makes excuses for, ignores, and even enables the worst parts of Angelo’s personality. Since the first time they met, Angelo would go through ‘phases’ with Alastor, where he’d be intently obsessed with him and unable to stay away from him, and then recalcitrant and distant, keeping him at arm’s length, when Alastor’s insistence on making a deal started to wear at him, but despite this Alastor remains Angelo’s most valued confidante and advisor, and really his only friend. Angelo got married aged 22 to Victoria Perrone, a surgeon he’d only known for three months, against the advice of literally everyone. Though Angelo was fairly certain at the time he was gay, Victoria was the single exception, mostly because she was a lot like him. About a month after they got married, they both agreed they were incompatible and decided to start seeing other people, but not to get divorced so as not to prove anyone right. This conviction lasted four years, until Victoria finally had enough of him and filed for divorce. They have a child together, a daughter named Eulalia, but Angelo is convinced that she isn't his and treats her as such. He pays alimony (thanks to a prenup his mother, a lawyer, wrote up for Victoria before their wedding) and child support, and occasionally is forced to look after Eula or pick her up from school, but besides that he doesn’t engage with his daughter’s life at all. — Now. Over the years, Angelo settled into his role as underboss of the family, with a reputation as his father’s attack dog, and a violent, sadistic thug who delights in hurting others and is not to be crossed. He keeps his sexuality well under wraps, but is a serial cheater and prefers relationships without commitment. After Angelo beat the everloving shit out of someone the Saluccis had taken in for questioning, almost killing him, Gio went to his consigliere Carlo with concerns about Angelo’s ability to lead the family considering his wafer-thin temper and inability to plan ahead, and eventually decided that he wanted to skip Angelo in the line of succession and name Ludo his successor. After Gio told Ludo about this, Ludo immediately went to Angelo for advice. Angelo, furious at being passed over, decided to kill Ludo. His original plan was to poison him, but he chickened out at the last minute, until Ludo called Angelo by the nickname he’s had for him since childhood, ‘Abbie’; it always irritated Angelo, but this time it pushed him over the edge, and he charged at Ludo, knocking him to the ground and strangling him to death. Using a newer development of his powers, Angelo has been able to successfully avoid the repercussions from killing his brother by erasing Ludo from the memories of everyone who ever knew him. As far as anyone else is concerned, Ludo never existed at all. A year or so later, fearing abandonment, Angelo performed a ritual binding to tether Alastor to him permanently. Alastor was deeply betrayed by this, as binding a demon to a human means that a demon is magically compelled to follow all orders the human gives them, thereby losing their free will in the process. At a party thrown by his father, Angelo brought his newly tethered demon to scope out a rival to the family named Battaglia, who caused a huge fire Personality: + Perseverant: Angelo can endure a lot of pain and suffering to get what he wants. He might seem thin-skinned, but there's a core of steel in him, formed after years of enduring his father's emotional and sometimes physical abuse. What he wants, simply, is to have control of the Salucci family, and if that means blinding himself to his father's true feelings about him, then he'll do it because he believes he needs to. Besides that, his wants fluctuate a lot, but when he does want something, he's entitled enough to act as if he already has it, which is quite an effective way of getting it. Another positive he's gained from this ability to ignore everything else in favour of what he wants is that Angelo really does not care about what almost anyone else thinks about him, except his father and, occasionally, Alastor. He's unfazed by insults, even direct ones in most contexts, and will let most things roll off his shoulders unless he decides he wants to be offended. - Angry: He has a very thin, easily breakable temper, and will resort to anger and violence alarmingly quickly. Every negative emotion he experiences (jealousy, stress, fear, sadness, etc.) funnels into his anger, and he hits his breaking point far faster than most other people do. But he has more experience than people assume with controlling his anger, by using it: he can get himself through something that would buckle other people on anger alone, and come out the other side stronger for it. Anger is a tool for him and something that sees him through the worst parts of his life, even if it makes him act impulsively, often cruelly, and always with his own best interests in mind above anyone else’s. Anger is the first thing he draws upon in all situations, and it's how he makes decisions. He’s prone to lashing out furiously and will resort to base violence faster than most people; he has a habit of smashing plates and glasses and tearing up rooms when he’s angry, and has little impulse control when it comes to destruction of property or people. Being raised in such close proximity to violence and trying to emulate that to please his father has made him see violence as the first option and sometimes the only one, and certainly never the last resort. At his absolute worst, Angelo is an arrogant, impulsive, cruel, sociopathic bully. All that being said: Angelo is under no illusions about these parts of himself. He’s hurt people and derived not even just joy but outright pleasure from the experience. He enjoys hurting people, physically or mentally – it makes him feel strong, and a lot of the time whenever he’s been slighted for some reason, he will purposefully find someone to hurt or mentally terrorise with his power, in order to make himself feel better. - Insecure: Angelo has an absolutely colossal outward-facing ego which masks and protects his true ego, which is about the size of a peanut and in need of constant buffing. A lethal combination of Alastor’s zealous insistence on his unique specialness and Gio’s disparaging relationship with him has left Angelo in a fragile state where he is deeply convinced of his own importance, but unable to see that conviction mirrored in the person he wants to see it the most. Insecurity, and to a lesser degree jealousy, is the main reason why he made his brother into an enemy: he hates being second-best and being ignored, and his competitive streak made him see Ludo as someone to fight. He's still functionally blind to the fact that he killed his brother for no reason; it's been a year since Ludo died and Angelo still doesn't have what he wants. If anything, Gio resents him more for being his only option. Angelo is stubbornly and almost blindly loyal to his father, allowing Gio to treat him the way he would never let anyone else treat him – Gio is an emotional and physical abuser, but Angelo has become so used to it that he can't see his father for what he is, and still desperately craves his respect and pride. Outwardly, Angelo expresses his loyalty by letting his brash, arrogant personality dwindle under Gio's gaze; he's much less aggressive with his father than with anyone else, and it takes very little from Gio to make Angelo capitulate and do what he says, because he always craves his approval. - Selfish: Binding Alastor to him was the culmination of Angelo's selfishness making him fear being abandoned, but not only abandoned - it was his fear of not being the centre of Alastor's world that spurred him to bind him, even though Angelo's cast him aside many times in the past with little care for Alastor's feelings on the matter. Being the centre of attention is the most important thing to him, and he finds it extremely difficult to operate if he isn't. He doesn't really have friends, so most of his relationships outside familial ones are sexual in nature, and he prefers to be highly in control in those situations, refusing to let others tell him what to do. He's quick to throw tantrums when he doesn't get what he wants, or when he perceives that he's not getting what he wants, even if that isn't necessarily true. Attention is everything to him, obsession one step better. His treatment of Valentino is another example of this; he enjoyed Valentino's attention until receiving it was no longer entertaining, at which point he left without even explaining why, leaving Valentino in the lurch. His selfishness is also demonstrated by his refusal to accept or take any responsibility for his daughter – less so in the sense that she deserves to have him in her life, because he'd be a terrible influence and an awful father to her, but simply because he finds it easier to live in denial. Powers and Abilities: Angelo is theoretically very, very powerful, bordering on overpowered. He has abilities nebulously grouped under the heading of 'reality warping', but obviously that's super vague; the vagueness accounts for the fact that Angelo really doesn't know the extent of his powers, both because his father pigeonholed him into doing one specific thing with them from a young age rather than letting him fully explore them, and because Alastor's constant influence in his life may have caused these powers to strengthen and develop over the years. I'm giving him a general nerf in that in-game he won't be able to develop any new powers, and only has the three main branches he can utilise now: - Illusion generation: Angelo can make other people experience short, intense bursts of extremely complex illusion, for example, he can make someone believe they're covered in bugs or being slashed by a thousand tiny razorblades. These illusions cause a lot of mental distress and often physical pain in their targets, and though people mostly come out of it physically unscathed, there have been occasions where a mind has believed in the illusion so strongly that the body was physically injured in some way. This is Angelo's main strength when it comes to his powers, and for a long time it was the only thing he thought he was capable of doing with them. They don't necessarily have to be torture-related, but it's all he's done for so long that it's like exercising a muscle he didn't know he had to do anything with an illusion besides this. This would be an opt-in thing, and a result of plotting OOC. - Memory manipulation: Angelo can press into someone's memories, looking for something specific, and erase it. He's not very practiced at it, and he usually tends to go storming into someone's mind with very little care. He's pretty much exclusively used this to erase his brother from the memories of the people who knew him, although he also uses it to erase his own face from the memories of any men he has one-night stands with. A memory that has been manipulated by Angelo is often very fuzzy and unclear and gives a general 'sense' of what he wants you to remember, rather than a crystal clear image of it. If he's removing a specific person or object from a memory, concentrating hard on the memory in your head, you might be able to notice a distinct blur where that person or object once was. I'd like to keep this one, but I understand that it could be really game-breaking if misused or overused. I'm happy to nerf it entirely if necessary. - Self defence: Angelo can use his powers to warp his own reality in order to defend himself from something. For example, he could light a candle and 'warp' the flame out of his reality, and hold his hand above the flame without burning himself. To anyone else watching, it would look as if he was impervious to the flame, but it's really just that the flame doesn't exist for him. He's also used this power to stop himself from choking to death on smoke from a fire, by warping the smoke out of his reality. It takes an awful lot of mental effort to keep this kind of thing up and he would never be able to make himself fully impervious to anything; it relies on mental fortitude and quick reactions, and any distraction would bring him out of it instantly. He's really not very good at this, and anything more than a few seconds takes so much effort that it'd eventually start to hurt him to keep it up. Angelo comes with a ton of built-in nerfs because he's terrible at using his powers, but if the mods feel I need to nerf anything further I'm happy to do so (I really love nerfing him tbh)! Generally in games I play with the idea that any strenuous use of his power (like, trying to keep something up for a long time, or doing something very intense) leads to nosebleeds and blinding migraines. I really don't find it enjoyable to make Angelo impervious to anything through the use of his powers, so he won't be using them to avoid death/injury/other consequences. Inventory: Gabbana, his sphynx cat |
