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TLV — application.
User Name/Nick: Bobby
User DW: n/a
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: crowders @ plurk / boppy#6969
Other Characters Currently In-Game: n/a
Character Name: Michelangelo "Angelo" Salucci
Age: 31
From When?: After the fire at the hotel
Inmate Justification: On the surface, Angelo is your typical ultraviolent, extremely vain asshole son of a mafia boss vying for attention from his dismissive, cruel father. This family angst culminated in Angelo killing his younger brother for essentially no reason, after finding out that his father intended to pass him in the line of succession and hand control of the family business to his brother. There's also the added dimension of the family demon, Alastor, whose two-century-long protective presence has imbued Angelo with extensive reality-warping powers that he has so far only used for his own gain. He's petulant, arrogant, vain, spiteful and mean, he uses everyone around him with little regard for their feelings, and he's very well settled in his role as the bad guy. The kind of person who'd blow smoke in your face on purpose.
Arrival: Agreed to graduate (with his fingers crossed behind his back)
Abilities/Powers: 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 plan on nerfing Angelo even in the instance that he does regain his powers: he'll no longer be able to develop any new abilities, and would only theoretically be able to regain the abilities he currently has at his canon point (which I will also heavily nerf based on inmate requirements). These are:
Inmate Information: HOO BOY. Angelo has committed lots of straight-up crimes in line with being active in a mafia family, including violence, theft, racketeering, aiding and abetting in the trade of drugs and weapons, and probably tax evasion too. Also torture (mostly mental with the use of his powers, but he's definitely just beaten people up to get information from them too) – this is both something he does under his own steam and something he's done because his father told him to. He once beat someone to the brink of death because the guy called him a slur, and the only reason he didn't kill him was because his father told him to stop. He is, in practically every way, a dog on his father's leash.
Also: he killed his brother. Killing Ludo was the culmination of years of feeling inferior and overlooked by his parents, years of building resentment and fury misdirected at his brother when it should have been directed at his father. It was a traumatic moment for Angelo, partially influenced by Alastor but something he definitely did under his own steam and because of his own anger issues and stubborn refusal to see the truth about his father. Possibly worse than killing him, though, is the way he's been consistently erasing memories of Ludo so he doesn't have to face what he did – each time he does it, he sees the other person's memories of Ludo, and they build up in Angelo's own head, more and more memories of his brother that he takes from others and keeps for himself. He finds it difficult, but it would be more difficult for him to admit to what he did, so it's easier for him to pretend Ludo never existed either.
Besides all that, he's just not very nice. He's been a bully for most of his life, picking on 'weaker' people and pushing them around, especially when they try to be kind. He'll turn that kindness back on them in an instant, which is largely how he treated Ludo before things came to a head. He's good at spotting people's weaknesses and turning them back on them, and at the same time he's quite unflappable; used to hearing how useless and stupid and brash and irritating he is from his father, so most insults people throw at him fall on uncaring ears, which can be incredibly frustrating if you're also trying to be constructive about the criticism. 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. He 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.
Angelo's first priority in almost all matters is himself. He treats others dismissively, even other's he's intimate with – he frequently only cares about his own enjoyment in sexual or romantic situations, and finds it difficult to even remember to reciprocate, which is largely how he treated Valentino before he up and left him when he got bored. Practically speaking, this makes him intensely selfish and myopic, determined to follow his own path and get what he feels he deserves. 'What he deserves' is, essentially, control of the family, handed to him by a father who respects and is proud of him. He's not an especially good leader, considering how selfish and aggressive he is, but it's the position he prefers to take, because trusting someone else to make those decisions would make him intensely uncomfortable. He prefers to boss people around and make them do what he says, and would be extremely recalcitrant to follow orders if someone else were in charge.
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.
Path to Redemption: Realistically speaking, there's very little chance that Angelo will ever become a fully good person with a strong moral compass. He's been raised in an environment of intense violence, where everything he wants and needs is funnelled into that environment, and his moral code is highly skewed by both a life of crime and Alastor's demonic influence. However, this doesn't mean Angelo is incapable of feeling regret for the terrible things he's done, or that he can't learn to care about certain other people and feel empathy for their struggles. It's possible for Angelo to learn, grow and change in small increments, if he's given room to change slowly, by someone dedicated enough to stick around, and also someone who isn't afraid to knock him down a few pegs whenever he gets too big for his boots, but who also knows how to massage his ego just right to stop him flipping out and cutting contact.
With patience, he's capable of at least expanding his loyalties, and seeing the truth of his father. That truth would also open him up to realising he targeted and killed his brother when the real cause of his problems was not Ludo at all, but his father. A lot of Angelo's issues also boil down to things he was taught and the way he was raised by his father, so unlearning those things – such as deep-rooted issues with masculinity, violence, and internalised homophobia (he's one of those homophobic homosexuals you've heard so much about) – will be vital in getting him to turn in a better direction.
In terms of life on the Barge, Angelo will be a bit of a fish out of water considering he'll be nerfed and without Alastor, but he's usually quite good at covering that up by being a Massive Asshole and overcompensating on that to the extreme. The only person Angelo is remotely subservient to is his father, so he'll regard the Admiral and his wardens very dubiously, treating them all as snivelling goody-two-shoes. As mentioned, it'll take dedication and a long time to crack him and pull him out of his worst habits, but any wardens who moralize too hard at him are going to get absolutely nowhere. He's also intensely suspicious of Nice People who try to empathise with him, shrinking away from that kind of thing on instinct because it just feels wrong to him. Ideally, a warden who can understand all that about him and knows how to work a long game, who can be sympathetic without being lenient and who can meet him on his level, would be the best shot at making him progress.
World Information: 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.
History:
Angelo is five years older than his brother Ludovico, of whom he's been intensely jealous since pretty much since the day Ludo 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.
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.
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. He and Victoria have an extremely distant relationship that is only barely cordial, and becomes intensely antagonistic if they spend too much time around each other.
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, paranoid about his standing in the family and fearing abandonment from his biggest asset, 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. He left Alastor to stew alone for a few days, and then brought him to a family event at which he knew there would be members of the Battaglia family in attendance. The Battaglias had emerged as rivals to the Salucci business in the last few years, and Angelo had a personal rivalry with their don, Santino, who was only a decade or so older than Angelo. They’d disliked each other since the first time they met – Battaglia had a habit of calling Angelo ‘Scarface’, for obvious reasons. Battaglia was known to believe that the ‘old guard’ of elderly dons were on their way out and was gunning for Gio’s position and his territory, putting Angelo in the crossfire too.
At the party, which was to celebrate the recent renovation of one of the Saluccis’ hotels, Angelo realised that Battaglia had come with three demons, who started a demonic fire and sent everyone running from the building – including Angelo, Alastor close behind, until Angelo realised that his mother might still have been trapped inside. He made to rush back in for her, and when Alastor tried to stop him under his binding directive of protecting Angelo, Angelo dismissed him with the fateful words, ‘Forget the orders.’ This released Alastor from any orders Angelo had previously given him – so, still furious at Angelo’s betrayal, Alastor let him run back into the building. Angelo managed to protect himself from the demons for as long as he could, but was quickly overpowered and killed by them, bringing him to the Barge.
Sample Network Entry:
[ The man in front of the camera looks kind of pissed that he's doing this at all (does he look like a vlogger to any of you?) – serious, brow furrowed, gaze intense and furious, a cigarette sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Aside from all that, most notable is the thick raised scar on his right cheek, clearly badly healed if you have even the most basic understanding of wound care. ]
I need someone to test something out on. A volunteer.
[ He has a heavy Long Island accent, and as he's talking he takes the cigarette out and blows smoke right at the camera. On purpose? Maybe. ]
I don't have any money so I won't be paying you. But I heard I'm sharing this prison-boat with cops or some shit equivalent, so maybe you guys wanna do it out of the goodness of your heart. Won't take long and I promise it won't hurt if you're not a pussy about it. Alright.
[ A beat, where it looks for a moment like he's considering saying more. Then he exhales a billow of smoke, and ends the video. ]
Sample RP:
Maybe he should start doing transcendental meditation or something, because this tight-chest, limbs-shaky, can't-breathe shit is not fucking cutting it.
He'd been fine on the way to his cabin, which is much more lavish than he expected it to be, which is nice. Nice of this Admiral guy to cut him even one bit of slack while he's trapped on this spaceship with a bunch of freaks on one end and a bunch of geeks on the other. Real nice. Anyway, the point is that he'd been fine all the way to his cabin, and then he'd walked inside and closed the door behind him, and now he's sitting on the floor with his back against the door and his head between his legs and his chest is tight, and his limbs are shaky, and he can't breathe. And it's not fucking cutting it.
The problem is that he's alone. The problem is that he has nothing. The problem is that he died in a fire, and now he's here, and Alastor isn't, and nobody knows the name Salucci. He wonders what his father's doing right now, if he's combing through the hotel wreckage looking for signs of him, if he's already given up looking, if he even lasted the night or if Battaglia has taken him out too. His stomach twists in pure panic. He says, "Fuck." He says, "Fucking fuckin' fuck!" His hands ball into fists, and with his head devoid of all thoughts except 'fuck' or a variation thereof, he swings one fist at the floor, hard as he can, hard enough that the impact jars all the way up his arm.
Angelo waits for a few seconds, until he's had enough time to actually feel the ache in his knuckles, and he swings his fist again.
Special Notes: n/a
User DW: n/a
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: crowders @ plurk / boppy#6969
Other Characters Currently In-Game: n/a
Character Name: Michelangelo "Angelo" Salucci
Age: 31
From When?: After the fire at the hotel
Inmate Justification: On the surface, Angelo is your typical ultraviolent, extremely vain asshole son of a mafia boss vying for attention from his dismissive, cruel father. This family angst culminated in Angelo killing his younger brother for essentially no reason, after finding out that his father intended to pass him in the line of succession and hand control of the family business to his brother. There's also the added dimension of the family demon, Alastor, whose two-century-long protective presence has imbued Angelo with extensive reality-warping powers that he has so far only used for his own gain. He's petulant, arrogant, vain, spiteful and mean, he uses everyone around him with little regard for their feelings, and he's very well settled in his role as the bad guy. The kind of person who'd blow smoke in your face on purpose.
Arrival: Agreed to graduate (with his fingers crossed behind his back)
Abilities/Powers: 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 plan on nerfing Angelo even in the instance that he does regain his powers: he'll no longer be able to develop any new abilities, and would only theoretically be able to regain the abilities he currently has at his canon point (which I will also heavily nerf based on inmate requirements). These are:
- 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 pieces of paper. 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.
Suggested nerf: Partially nerfed based on this guidance from mods – he will be unable to actually hurt others or make them believe their bodies have been affected with this, but could marginally alter their perception for a maximum of 30 seconds. - 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.
Suggested nerf: 100% nerfed. - 'Personal' reality warp: This is a really vague one since he's only just starting to figure it out, but 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.
Suggested nerf: Honestly, he nerfs himself quite hard on this because he's not very good at it (he literally JUST learned he could do it before immediately dying), but I know that's kind of a cop-out and could theoretically allow me to play fast and loose with what counts as 'being bad at a power I made up'. SO, in terms of actual game mechanics, I'll say that the examples above are acceptable, but any threat larger than a trash can, heavier than a standard car or half as fast as a bullet, he won't be able to protect himself from.
Inmate Information: HOO BOY. Angelo has committed lots of straight-up crimes in line with being active in a mafia family, including violence, theft, racketeering, aiding and abetting in the trade of drugs and weapons, and probably tax evasion too. Also torture (mostly mental with the use of his powers, but he's definitely just beaten people up to get information from them too) – this is both something he does under his own steam and something he's done because his father told him to. He once beat someone to the brink of death because the guy called him a slur, and the only reason he didn't kill him was because his father told him to stop. He is, in practically every way, a dog on his father's leash.
Also: he killed his brother. Killing Ludo was the culmination of years of feeling inferior and overlooked by his parents, years of building resentment and fury misdirected at his brother when it should have been directed at his father. It was a traumatic moment for Angelo, partially influenced by Alastor but something he definitely did under his own steam and because of his own anger issues and stubborn refusal to see the truth about his father. Possibly worse than killing him, though, is the way he's been consistently erasing memories of Ludo so he doesn't have to face what he did – each time he does it, he sees the other person's memories of Ludo, and they build up in Angelo's own head, more and more memories of his brother that he takes from others and keeps for himself. He finds it difficult, but it would be more difficult for him to admit to what he did, so it's easier for him to pretend Ludo never existed either.
Besides all that, he's just not very nice. He's been a bully for most of his life, picking on 'weaker' people and pushing them around, especially when they try to be kind. He'll turn that kindness back on them in an instant, which is largely how he treated Ludo before things came to a head. He's good at spotting people's weaknesses and turning them back on them, and at the same time he's quite unflappable; used to hearing how useless and stupid and brash and irritating he is from his father, so most insults people throw at him fall on uncaring ears, which can be incredibly frustrating if you're also trying to be constructive about the criticism. 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. He 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.
Angelo's first priority in almost all matters is himself. He treats others dismissively, even other's he's intimate with – he frequently only cares about his own enjoyment in sexual or romantic situations, and finds it difficult to even remember to reciprocate, which is largely how he treated Valentino before he up and left him when he got bored. Practically speaking, this makes him intensely selfish and myopic, determined to follow his own path and get what he feels he deserves. 'What he deserves' is, essentially, control of the family, handed to him by a father who respects and is proud of him. He's not an especially good leader, considering how selfish and aggressive he is, but it's the position he prefers to take, because trusting someone else to make those decisions would make him intensely uncomfortable. He prefers to boss people around and make them do what he says, and would be extremely recalcitrant to follow orders if someone else were in charge.
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.
Path to Redemption: Realistically speaking, there's very little chance that Angelo will ever become a fully good person with a strong moral compass. He's been raised in an environment of intense violence, where everything he wants and needs is funnelled into that environment, and his moral code is highly skewed by both a life of crime and Alastor's demonic influence. However, this doesn't mean Angelo is incapable of feeling regret for the terrible things he's done, or that he can't learn to care about certain other people and feel empathy for their struggles. It's possible for Angelo to learn, grow and change in small increments, if he's given room to change slowly, by someone dedicated enough to stick around, and also someone who isn't afraid to knock him down a few pegs whenever he gets too big for his boots, but who also knows how to massage his ego just right to stop him flipping out and cutting contact.
With patience, he's capable of at least expanding his loyalties, and seeing the truth of his father. That truth would also open him up to realising he targeted and killed his brother when the real cause of his problems was not Ludo at all, but his father. A lot of Angelo's issues also boil down to things he was taught and the way he was raised by his father, so unlearning those things – such as deep-rooted issues with masculinity, violence, and internalised homophobia (he's one of those homophobic homosexuals you've heard so much about) – will be vital in getting him to turn in a better direction.
In terms of life on the Barge, Angelo will be a bit of a fish out of water considering he'll be nerfed and without Alastor, but he's usually quite good at covering that up by being a Massive Asshole and overcompensating on that to the extreme. The only person Angelo is remotely subservient to is his father, so he'll regard the Admiral and his wardens very dubiously, treating them all as snivelling goody-two-shoes. As mentioned, it'll take dedication and a long time to crack him and pull him out of his worst habits, but any wardens who moralize too hard at him are going to get absolutely nowhere. He's also intensely suspicious of Nice People who try to empathise with him, shrinking away from that kind of thing on instinct because it just feels wrong to him. Ideally, a warden who can understand all that about him and knows how to work a long game, who can be sympathetic without being lenient and who can meet him on his level, would be the best shot at making him progress.
World Information: 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.
History:
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 to protect the bloodline before they’d emigrated from Italy.Angelo is five years older than his brother Ludovico, of whom he's been intensely jealous since pretty much since the day Ludo 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, his parents and his brother 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 corpses in Pompeii; his father, furious with him, slapped him across the face and cut his cheek with his ring in the process, leaving a scar that he refused to have treated properly. He 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
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. He and Victoria have an extremely distant relationship that is only barely cordial, and becomes intensely antagonistic if they spend too much time around each other.
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, paranoid about his standing in the family and fearing abandonment from his biggest asset, 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. He left Alastor to stew alone for a few days, and then brought him to a family event at which he knew there would be members of the Battaglia family in attendance. The Battaglias had emerged as rivals to the Salucci business in the last few years, and Angelo had a personal rivalry with their don, Santino, who was only a decade or so older than Angelo. They’d disliked each other since the first time they met – Battaglia had a habit of calling Angelo ‘Scarface’, for obvious reasons. Battaglia was known to believe that the ‘old guard’ of elderly dons were on their way out and was gunning for Gio’s position and his territory, putting Angelo in the crossfire too.
At the party, which was to celebrate the recent renovation of one of the Saluccis’ hotels, Angelo realised that Battaglia had come with three demons, who started a demonic fire and sent everyone running from the building – including Angelo, Alastor close behind, until Angelo realised that his mother might still have been trapped inside. He made to rush back in for her, and when Alastor tried to stop him under his binding directive of protecting Angelo, Angelo dismissed him with the fateful words, ‘Forget the orders.’ This released Alastor from any orders Angelo had previously given him – so, still furious at Angelo’s betrayal, Alastor let him run back into the building. Angelo managed to protect himself from the demons for as long as he could, but was quickly overpowered and killed by them, bringing him to the Barge.
Sample Network Entry:
[ The man in front of the camera looks kind of pissed that he's doing this at all (does he look like a vlogger to any of you?) – serious, brow furrowed, gaze intense and furious, a cigarette sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Aside from all that, most notable is the thick raised scar on his right cheek, clearly badly healed if you have even the most basic understanding of wound care. ]
I need someone to test something out on. A volunteer.
[ He has a heavy Long Island accent, and as he's talking he takes the cigarette out and blows smoke right at the camera. On purpose? Maybe. ]
I don't have any money so I won't be paying you. But I heard I'm sharing this prison-boat with cops or some shit equivalent, so maybe you guys wanna do it out of the goodness of your heart. Won't take long and I promise it won't hurt if you're not a pussy about it. Alright.
[ A beat, where it looks for a moment like he's considering saying more. Then he exhales a billow of smoke, and ends the video. ]
Sample RP:
Maybe he should start doing transcendental meditation or something, because this tight-chest, limbs-shaky, can't-breathe shit is not fucking cutting it.
He'd been fine on the way to his cabin, which is much more lavish than he expected it to be, which is nice. Nice of this Admiral guy to cut him even one bit of slack while he's trapped on this spaceship with a bunch of freaks on one end and a bunch of geeks on the other. Real nice. Anyway, the point is that he'd been fine all the way to his cabin, and then he'd walked inside and closed the door behind him, and now he's sitting on the floor with his back against the door and his head between his legs and his chest is tight, and his limbs are shaky, and he can't breathe. And it's not fucking cutting it.
The problem is that he's alone. The problem is that he has nothing. The problem is that he died in a fire, and now he's here, and Alastor isn't, and nobody knows the name Salucci. He wonders what his father's doing right now, if he's combing through the hotel wreckage looking for signs of him, if he's already given up looking, if he even lasted the night or if Battaglia has taken him out too. His stomach twists in pure panic. He says, "Fuck." He says, "Fucking fuckin' fuck!" His hands ball into fists, and with his head devoid of all thoughts except 'fuck' or a variation thereof, he swings one fist at the floor, hard as he can, hard enough that the impact jars all the way up his arm.
Angelo waits for a few seconds, until he's had enough time to actually feel the ache in his knuckles, and he swings his fist again.
Special Notes: n/a